


100 Nights in Arabâya

by myadamantiumheart



Series: The Desert King [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Non-consensual sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:58:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 43,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myadamantiumheart/pseuds/myadamantiumheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Timotheé Drake, heir apparent to the throne of the kingdom of Bristollen, is on the run- his parents have been murdered, and their killer is just behind him. When a mortal wound leaves him bleeding on the steps of the Desert King's doorstep, he's given a new chance at life- no one here knows his past or his name, and here he can hide from the mercenary that's chased him across the globe. That is, as long as he can prove himself to the Desert King's grandson, High Prince Damian Al Ghul. For it's in Prince Damian's hands now whether or not he can stay within the walls of the palace of Arabâya; and whether or not he can remain alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Arrival ; The First Night: Solange and Badrani

**Author's Note:**

> There are some changed names in this work to go along with the AU setting: Timotheé is Tim Drake, obviously. Rikard/Dité is Dick Grayson. There might be others, but I haven't exactly decide them yet. Bristollen is basically a fantasy-France, Anglas is England-ish, Arabâya is sort of a Middle-Eastern desert country, Schatten is a Germany/Prussia-like country.  
> There isn't a very set sense of time period in this because it's fantasy; there's magic, a liquid sense of innovations and inventions, and travel varies from place to place but remain decidedly steampunk and might at some point in the far future involve airships.  
> And I think that's all for now!

When Timotheé awakes, groggy and squirming sluggishly in a shroud of linens and silks, he cannot place the sounds around him. The darkness, lit only by candles, confuses his bleary eyes, and he struggles to sit up only to cry out, voice hoarse in the shadows, as pain rips through his hip. It is, in a word, disorienting. A hand, calloused and gentle, smooths his bangs back, and he blinks back tears of pain until he can see the man sitting beside him on the floor mattress, smiling down at him.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” the man says softly, cupping his cheek for a moment with a cool hand. “You weren’t doing very well there for a while.” Tim tries to clear his throat, fingers twitching as he clutches the sheets and levers himself up on his elbows again. He’s dizzier sitting up than he was laying down, and he’s not sure how that’s possible, considering how awful the sheer spinning madness of his vision was in that position.  

“W-where-?” He chokes out a half sentence, looking down at himself and trying to see where his injuries are. The last thing he remembers is sand, sand, sand everywhere, red and gold in his vision and sick, wet, fiery pain in his hip, the man of two colors smirking above him with a bloodied sword.

“The palace of the Desert King,” the man murmurs, pressing him gently back into the mattress. “Specifically, the harem. Don’t strain yourself, little bird. The Desert King and the Prince will be coming to see you soon, now that you’ve awoken.” Timotheé sucks in a breath, closing his eyes at the pain.

The Desert King, of all people- and his harem, of all places. He’d known that when his parents had died, he would have to flee, but he’d never expected his path to lead him here. Thousands upon thousands of miles away from his home- back in that home, the kingdom of Bristollen, the Drake family had ruled the throne. After the man of two colors had slain his parents and he had run, though, Tim knew he would not be able to use his connections to get him out of trouble. And he found himself proven right- he doubted he could use them now. The Desert King was not likely to recognize the forgotten son of the slain monarchs of an overturned dynasty.

It might benefit him further to keep his identity a secret than to reveal himself to denizens of a court he could not trust. The Land of the Sun, Arabâya, did not recognize other’s authority often, and certainly they would not now. He sighed heavily, letting the humming of the other man lull him into a shallow sleep, fitful and fevered and slippery with the pain of his wounds. There was no other option. There was no return to his homeland- better to try and survive here than face certain death in transparency.

The scratching, scraping steps of sandals wake Timotheé from his doze, shadows looming in the candlelight, falling black over both the man attending his bedside and Timotheé himself. He cannot see the faces of the two men, but they bring with them the smell of the desert night, cold and clean to a degree of sharpness.

“He is injured,” the taller one says, voice young and haughty, echoing the chamber. The attendant nods, bowing his head slightly over Timotheé and pressing a hand gently to his hip. It brings an ache deep in his bone, a sharp surface pain, and Timotheé can feel his hands juddering involuntarily at the sensation, his weakened muscles attempting to jerk away from the man’s hand. The man lifts it- apologies in his eyes and regret in the set of his mouth, and Timotheé can feel his own heart racing as he tries to regain his bearings in the slowly receding tide of agony.

“He was run through with sword, Prince Damian,” the attendant murmurs. “The soldiers found him bleeding out on the dunes. He will survive, though. Selina has been applying herbal tinctures and compresses that ensure infection will not set in.”

“Does he have a name, Rikard?” the shorter man asks, his voice amused, old and slightly reedy. A lion’s voice, hiding in the tall grasses of the savannah- a power hidden beneath the carapace of a benign elder. The attendant, Rikard, shakes his head slowly.

“I haven’t asked him, your highness,” Rikard says. “He only just awoke minutes ago, and he has not been lucid these past weeks.” The shorter man bends, Rikard slipping gracefully out of the way, and Timotheé finds himself looking into piercing green eyes, a wrinkled hand cupping his jaw and holding his face gently.

“Do you have a name, little one?” the Desert King asks, voice soft like the winds through the heather and gorse outside Timotheé’s favorite palace garden. He can feel the truth battering at his own chest, unwillingly to deceive in the face of such restrained and terribly overwhelming power. Timotheé swallows heavily, opening his jaw uselessly several times in an attempt to talk before he succeeds, his tongue thick with lies.

“Timotheé,” He finally manages to grit out, choking on the pain in his hip. The Desert King frowns, smoothing his bangs back over his flushed forehead and leaning back. The tinge of concern is real- for all Timotheé can see.

“Rikard, have you not given him something for the pain?”

“I requested that he be kept lucid when he awoke for questioning, Grandfather,” Prince Damian says, offering a gauntleted arm to the King to help him to his feet. His eyes, glittering, hard gems in the light of the room, linger on Timotheé’s sweat-soaked face, and Timotheé feels a bitter clench in his chest at the blatant curiosity. He is a spectacle here, and his helplessness can only settle deeper with each order regarding his care the Prince gives. “There is no need any longer, however.”

“Have Selina give him something,” the Desert King instructs, running a fond hand over the crown of Rikard’s head as the other man looks up at him. “For now, he will remain here in Damian’s harem. Once he is healed adequately, though- he is Damian’s jurisdiction. You will choose whether he stays or goes, grandson. I have no need for runaway boys now more than I ever have.” The Desert King looks down at Timotheé, and Timotheé feels himself flush harder, closing his eyebrows against the flood of vertigo and fear. Fear that he will be turned out into the sands, the red and gold and the lands that the man of two colors can find him in.

Perhaps the curiosity, loathed thus far, will serve him when it comes time for such decisions.

“As you say, your highness, Prince Damian,” Rikard demurs, his hand pressing comfortingly against Timotheé’s shoulder.

And their sandals scrape away, leaving Timotheé shuddering in his bedding. Rikard leans to look at him, breath blowing sweet over Timotheé’s face as he presses his cheek to Timotheés forehead.

“Your fever has gone down,” Rikard says softly. “That’s good.” Timotheé opens his eyes and Rikard is smiling, bright enough to see in the darkness of the room. “Timotheé, huh? What can I call you, Timotheé? Timbo? Teema? Tee? Timmy? I once knew a man named Timoteu, but we all called him Teuto.” Rikard grins wider. “I bet you don’t want to be called that, huh?” Timotheé manages to shake his head, trying a weak smile and resting his head back against the pillow.

“They called me Tiya, or Tim,” he rasps, rolling his head towards Rikard.

“They nicknamed me Dité, like the way the Anglans call their Richards ‘Dick’,” Rikard laughs. “Here, though, my old master, The Desert King’s Son-in-law, called me Robin, my old circus name.”

“Which one?” Timotheé asks, his eyes closing of their own volition. “For me, I m-mean.”

“Oh, tired bird,” Rikard whispers, petting Timotheé’s stomach, carefully avoiding the left hip. “I think I’d like it if you called me Robin.”

“Robin,” Timotheé slurs, his breaths slowing as he falls back asleep, exhausted by the effort of staying awake through the pain. Rikard stops stroking his stomach when the boy finally falls asleep, standing and tugging the rope that will ring a bell in Selina’s apothecary to call her to the harem rooms.

The poor little bird needs some medicine if his wings are going to heal.

\----

When Rikard ushers him off of his window seat one night, tugging him towards his room, past the emptiness of all the rooms Damian hasn’t filled with harem members, Timotheé does not expect the sight of the only other member of Damian’s harem, the Anglas slave Jason, sitting sprawled across the head of Rikard’s bed, grinning, surrounded by cosmetics.

“Today’s the day, Tiya-bird,” Jason drawls when Rikard pushes him through the door. “Damian has oh-so-politely requested you be in his rooms by the eleventh bell, or he will come and drag you there himself.” 

“Are these really necessary?” Timotheé asks, pushing back against Rikard’s insistent hands even as they shove him towards the bed and slide against his clothes in an attempt to pull them off.

“You really don’t want to displease Damian,” Rikard says brightly, managing to divest Timotheé of his shirt and pants in one swift maneuver as soon as Timotheé is close enough for Jason to grab hold of. The younger man squeaks, covering his lower half with his hands and flushing even as Jason laughs and gropes his ass even as he turns Timotheé towards him, holding up a small glass compact and a stick of beeswax calendula lip-stain smelling heavily of nutmeg and cloves next to Timotheé’s face.

“What d’ya know, Dité, you picked the perfect shades for the little bird-” Jason grins, cupping the back of Timotheé’s head and forcing him to bend down so that he could drop the compact on the bed and balance the stick of lip stain on two fingers, dragging it across Timotheé’s lips firmly and steadily. Rikard’s timing, as usual, is impeccable- the second the Anglas slave holds the lip stain away from Timotheé’s mouth, Timotheé jerks in surprise and yelps at the cold touch of the henna brush to his lower back, swiping across the sensitive, shiny pink of his hip scar on both sides. Jason laughs, gripping Timotheé’s jaw steadily.

“Close your eyes, Tiya-bird,” he murmurs, holding up a stick of khol. “You don’t want to be crying when we bring you to the Prince.”

—

Timotheé sits on the cushion, fiddling with the beads of his sheer, loose pants, when Prince Damian walks in. The prince sprawls, indolent, across the cushions across the low table, and waves a bare hand at Timotheé.

“Entertain me.” He commands. Timotheé swallows heavily and looks down at his lap before glancing back up at the prince.

“How do you wish to be entertained?” He asks, low and soft, voice muffled in the hazed air of the incense-filled room, candle light and firelight gilding the lines of the prince’s face when he narrows his eyes at Timotheé.

“If you cannot entertain me, you will leave.” Prince Damian says imperiously before sprawling back again. “Now. Begin.”

So Timotheé does the only thing he knows how to- he tells the prince a story.

“In the beginning,” Timotheé says, “there were two lovers, Solange and Badrani…”

_In the beginning, there were two lovers, Solange and Badrani. Solange was of the day, and Badrani of the night. In the beginning, they knew not of each other. Solange raised the sun up in the heavens with her hands that did not burn, no matter how many times she touched the fire of its rays. Badrani pulled the moon through the stars with a rope that did not break, no matter how many comets crashed against it._

_But then, one nightfall during the time of Badrani’s journey, when the colors were pooling in the sky, Solange stepped out of her house to watch them dance across the heavens. Looking down on the earth below him, Badrani nearly tripped over a star and fell from the sky when he laid eyes on Solange’s beautiful face looking up at him from below._

_He tugged the moon faster, pulling it down to rest in the pond outside his house as dawn broke across the horizon, before he put on his best pair of sandals and started out across the land. He walked and walked, the light growing stronger and stronger, until he came across the beautiful woman he had spotted, carrying the sun on her head with a steady neck and never-failing hands._

_“You are the light,” Badrani said, wonder in his voice, reaching out to her, and she stepped back once before standing still._

_“You are the dark,” she replied, stepping forward again and walking past him._

_“What is your name?” Badrani pleaded, following her, matching her footsteps in the dust._

_“What is yours?” Solange asked, never turning her head from its position facing forward._

_“I am Badrani,” he said proudly, standing taller in his strides. “I am the moon.”_

_“I am Solange,” she told him. “I am the sun.”_

_And then she smiled, and he was struck down with an arrow through the heart at the sight of it, love blossoming in his chest. He fell to his knees in the dust and she kept walking, and he watched her until she disappeared across the horizon, taking the light with her. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever known. Badrani was determined to have her._

_He pulled the moon across the sky in the night, letting its silvery light illuminate the land below, but he did not see her that night. Badrani left flowers in her path before he fell asleep, and Solange passed by his house in a glow of light but he did not wake._

_In the twilight, the flowers were wilted, burned in the harsh light of the sun on Solange’s head, and Badrani gathered them up before he went to work. He did not see her that night either, and so before he fell asleep, he again left something for Solange, bread that he had baked on his hearth._

_In the twilight, a note was scrawled in the dust in a careful hand._

_“I do not eat,” it said, and Badrani gathered up the bread and wiped the note away, tearing chunks off of it and chewing it thoughtfully throughout the night. This dawn, before he fell asleep, he sat at the forge and pounded iron until it shaped the delicate petals of a rose in gleaming metal._

_In the twilight, when he awoke, Solange was sitting in his garden, sunless, with the rose in her hand._

_“The flowers burn and wilt before me, and I have never had a chance to see one truly. I have never seen something more beautiful,” Solange told him, looking up at Badrani with sad eyes._

_“I have,” Badrani said, and he drew her face into his hands, and he kissed her._

Timotheé looked down at his hands again, twisting the hip scarf, peeking at Prince Damian’s silent figure from under thick lashes in the pressing quiet.

“That’s the end?” the prince finally said, raising his head and sitting upright to stare at Timotheé with piercing blue eyes. Timotheé nodded, flushing slightly. The prince huffed. “He kisses her? That’s it? What happens next?”

“They were lovers, teaching the sun and the moon to spin around the sky until they no longer needed Solange and Badrani’s help and the lovers were free to live their lives together until death,” Timotheé shrugged. “It is a love story. It has no real end.”

“All love stories have an end,” the prince said darkly, staring at the fire. “Love is not forever, foolish boy.” Timotheé hunched his shoulders, curling into himself when Prince Damian turned his intense gaze back on the younger man. “Do you truly think that?” He laughed derisively. “What, then, is love to you, Timotheé?”

“Love  _is_ ,” Timotheé said quietly, turning from the prince’s gaze. “Not one is the same, not one can be compared. It simply is, no true end and no clear beginning. It exists until it does not, in the way that people do. Sometimes is dies long before the heart it is attached to does, but it never goes away. It leaves scars, and it will live on in those until the scars too cease to exist.” The prince scoffed, a harsh sound in his throat, and his hawk eyes left the pale planes of Timotheé’s face for the crackling fire.

“You may go.”

Timotheé went.


	2. Baba Yaga & The Mourning; Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian questions; Timotheé represses. And sitting out for too long in the rain isn't good for anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some changed names in this work to go along with the AU setting: Timotheé is Tim Drake, obviously. Rikard/Dité is Dick Grayson. There might be others, but I haven't exactly decide them yet. Bristollen is basically a fantasy-France, Anglas is England-ish, Arabâya is sort of a Middle-Eastern desert country, Schatten is a Germany/Prussia-like country.   
> There isn't a very set sense of time period in this because it's fantasy; there's magic, a liquid sense of innovations and inventions, and travel varies from place to place but remain decidedly steampunk and might at some point in the far future involve airships.   
> And I think that's all for now!

He almost wants to cry, when he wakes up to find the rain outside and the sun inside and everything smelling of spices and clean clouds.

It is nothing like the rain in his home.

It is nothing like the rain in Bristollen. (Where is the smog? Where are the suffocating fogs?)

And he curses the man of two colors for taking them away from him, he curses him and he, he wants to take a knife and tear it through that heart. If the man of two colors _has_ a heart, even.

Breakfast is bread, baked in the kitchens, soft and chewy and spiced with cardamom and rose water. He sips tea and watches Rikard and Jason, sprawled out in front of the fireplace, wrapped in blankets and laughing sleepily at each other, poking at one another. They asked him, earlier- Rikard asked him, Robin asked him, Dité asked him, curling his hands around Timotheé’s shoulders and drawing him in, kissing his forehead and inquiring about last night.

“He didn’t even notice I was made up,” Timotheé tells Dité, scowling up at the other man halfheartedly and sighing when he only laughs.

“How did you entertain him?” they ask, and Timotheé wants to cringe. (For he has known the Prince for many moons, now, but still- he is still just a slave, telling stories to earn his keep, to keep him here, and the interest that the Prince has in him makes him feel the weight of his status more now than ever.)

“I told him a fairy tale,” he mumbles. Jason laughs, but Rikard only looks at him with appraising eyes, shoving him towards the breakfast table and pointing out the blankets stacked up for them during this rainstorm.

He sits in the gardens when the rains start to pause, curling his fingers under the bench edge and staring up at the greyed skies above. His scarves are soaked, and his feet are cold, but he does not notice, the henna red of his toenail polish standing out, bright cherries against the darkened obsidian pavers of the garden path. (It still isn’t anything like Bristollen.)

He wonders if he should be mourning his parents still.

Even if they were gone most of the time, diplomatic missions when they were absent and diplomatic dinners when they weren’t, Timotheé feels as though he hasn’t done them justice in the month since their death. Jannette had kissed him on the forehead once, when he was younger, and he remembers the smell of her perfume as it lingered in the air after she walked away to talk to visiting dignitaries. She was roses and cold things, cucumber and freesia in the icy winter wind, and he had stuffed handkerchiefs that had been soaked in her perfume under his pillow when he missed her. Jacques had been ugly wooden smells, cologne that Mrs. Mac had told him were kingly, but even if it burned Timotheé’s nose, he wanted it near him.

He misses his parents, but he’s grown used it, the holes in his chest and the pain in his heart and the way his fingers will always be grasping at shadowed loved ones that will never be truly present. (Never again, now.)

He wonders, briefly, if Damian has parents. (He must.)

Timotheé sits on the stones until the rain begins to fall again. He lets the rain soak him through, shivering and not even noticing it, and Dité and Jason come to push and pull him up into the harem rooms and into dry clothes.

(Timotheé does not see the blue eyes, watching him through the gap in the trees.)

—  
He sits, again, on the cushion. The same one as before. Timotheé is a creature of routine, of careful guarded ways, and he hopes- well, when the prince enters, slinking along the edges of the room to hang his sword on the hook beside the fireplace, he shifts a little and hopes Prince Damian does not make him move.

There is blood, spattered across the golden tunic that the prince is wearing- Damian shoves the tunic off, baring his chest, and sprawls himself across the low table. He looks at Timotheé, the fire reflecting in his eyes.

“You are not to make yourself ill,” he says, after a while, sitting up slightly more and pouring himself a cup of tea from the iron pot on one end of the table. Timotheé inclines his head. Prince Damian huffs impatiently, shoving a ceramic cup towards him and rolling his eyes under thick lashes. “Drink, Timotheé. You sat in the gardens for far too long, and it will not do for you to catch cold so soon after such an injury. You will be of now use, then.”

He waits for Timotheé to drink before he waves his hand again and relaxes back into the cushions.

“Begin,” he says.

Nothing more complicated than that, but Timotheé knows what he means, and he takes a deep breath, steeling himself.

“A long time ago, there lived a merchant and his wife, and they had a daughter, whose name was Vasilisa…”

_But the mother was ill, and dying, and so one day, she placed a small doll in Vasilisa’s hands._

_“I am dying, my sweet,” she told Vasilisa. “This doll is my blessing to you, so that you shall never be alone. Always keep it with you, Vasilisa, and you will be safe, for if ever anything bad happens to you, give the doll food and ask her for guidance.”_

_Not a day later, the mother died, and the merchant and Vasilisa grieved. In the merchant’s grief, he was lonely, and so he married a widow who he thought would be a good mother for his daughter. But the widow and her own daughters despised Vasilisa for her beauty, and gave her heavy work to do outdoors so that she would grow thin and her face would turn ugly in the harsh wind and sun._

_But Vasilisa kept becoming more beautiful every day. In secret, each day, she would give her mother’s token food and ask for advice. When the doll had eaten, they would do the tasks together and the doll would bring Vasilisa herbs for her face to prevent sunburn. But her growing beauty caused her stepmother’s hatred to intensify, and finally, after years had passed, the stepmother took action._

_Whilst the merchant was away on business, the stepmother moved the family to the edge of the heaviest birch forest, the forest where the infamous Baba Yaga lived. Baba Yaga, it was said, ate people like others ate chicken. She was terrifying._

_Every day, the stepmother would send Vasilisa into the forest, hoping that Baba Yaga would find her and eat her. But every day, Vasilisa came home safe and sound._

_Then one night, the stepmother crept around the house and extinguished all the candles._

_As the last candle failed, she said in a loud voice._

_“It’s impossible to finish our work in the darkness. Somebody must go to Baba-Yaga and ask for a light.”_

_“I’m not going,” said the first stepdaughter, who was stitching lace. “I can see my needle.”_

_“And I’m not going,” said the second stepdaughter, who was knitting stockings, “I can see my needle.”_

_So Vasilisa was thrown out into the dark forbidding forest. Despite her fear, she fed her magic doll and asked for its advice._

_“Don’t be afraid, Vasilisa,” said the doll. “Go to Baba-Yaga and ask her to give you a light.”_

_All that night, Vasilisa walked nervously through the forest holding the doll who guided her path. Then suddenly, she saw a horseman rushing by. His face and clothes were white and he was riding a white horse. As he passed the first light of dawn appeared across the sky. Then, another horseman came by. His face and clothes were red and he was riding a red horse. As he passed the sun began to rise. Vasilisa had never seen such strange men and she was very surprised._

_She walked all day, until at last she came to Baba-Yaga’s hut, which stood forbidding on its large chicken legs. A fence made of human bones surrounded the hut. It was crowned with human skulls. The gate had a sharp set of teeth that served as a lock. Vasilisa was terribly afraid._

_Suddenly, another horseman galloped by. His face and clothes were black and he was riding a black horse. He rode through the gates and disappeared. As he passed, night descended._

_As the sky darkened the eyes of the skulls began to glow. Their light illuminated the forest. Vasilisa trembled, she wanted to run but her legs would not move. Almost immediately she heard a hideous noise. The earth shook, the trees groaned and there was Baba-Yaga, riding in her mortar. She stopped and sniffed the air._

_“I smell a human!” she cried. “Who is here?”_

_Vasilisa stepped forward, trembling with fear. She said, “I am Vasilisa. My stepmother sent me to you to ask for a light.”_

_“I know of her.” Baba-Yaga replied. “Stay with me for a while. If you work well, I will give you light. If you do not, I will cook you and eat you.”  Baba-Yaga commanded the gates to open and rode in. Vasilisa followed and the gates closed fast behind her._

“Wait, wait,” the prince said, his voice ringing out in the room. “She goes into Baba Yaga’s hut?” He scoffed, shaking his head. “Timotheé, I did not ask you to tell me of idiot girls who purposefully put themselves in danger. I know how this will end.” Timotheé fiddled with the scarf over his lap, not looking up.

“How will it end?” he asks quietly.

“She will ask the doll for help,” Prince Damian says, staring at Timotheé with hot eyes. “She will ask the doll for help, and the doll will help her. She will get the light, and the stepmother will be furious. She triumphs because she is beautiful, and the beautiful always triumph.” Timotheé laughed, unable to help it, pulling the scarf from his lap and making to stand up. He balanced on the pillow, curling his toes against the cold, and nodded to the prince.

“If you already know the end, there is no need for me to stay,” Timotheé says. The prince frowns.

“You do not agree?” he says, dangerous and sharp. The prince has sat up, his eyes dark, focused on Timotheé’s face. “Is this not how all fairy tales end? Do the beautiful not triumph over those whose folly makes them ugly?”

“Can the ugly not be without folly?” Timotheé murmured, closing his eyes for a brief moment. “Can the beautiful not be with it?” He laughs, again, painful and shredded in his lungs. “Beauty is not a guarantee of success. I know that very well.” The silence, once he stops talking, it deafening. And all at once, Timotheé knows that he has said too much, and not enough.

“You will sit,” the prince says, edged and rough, his hand going for a sword that does not rest by his side. Timotheé sits, settling uneasily onto his pillow, and Prince Damian leans forward, his eyes glinting dangeorusly in the firelight. “I do not want a fairy tale from you, Timotheé.”

“What do you want, then?” he snapped, head rising until he held the prince’s gaze steady. “What do you want from me? All I have are my stories,  _Prince Damian_ _,_ ” he spat. “I am left without anything I once called mine. Is it my body that you want? My mind?” Timotheé ripped his tunic from his shoulders, shaking it out with his hands on the hem and feeling the ache in his throat rise up. “I will not entertain you with my pain alone, your  _highness_.”

“I want a story that does not have a happy ending,” Damian said, his fingers clenching on the edge of the wooden table. “I want you to tell me of yourself, Timotheé. How did you come to be here?” He grinned, sharp and mean. “If that is truly all you have… Well.” His teeth shone like foxes, and Timotheé shivered. Long fingers, tan fingers, beckoned to him. “I would have it all.” Timotheé shook his head and stood once again.

“I cannot.” he said softly, turning for the doors of the room. The prince stands behind him, taking a step forward, striding over pillows and grasping his wrist before Timotheé can escape the room.

“You  _will_ ,” he says, strident and angry.

“I  _cannot_ ,” Timotheé repeats, trying to shake off Prince Damian’s hand and reach for the door. But one move, two, and his back slams against the stone, piercing blue eyes searching his. (And how, how did he end up here, pressed to a wall by an Arabâyan prince and sucking in shallow breaths, trying not to brush against the muscles that box him in? It was a fairy tale, he thinks. Only a fairy tale. Like so many things in Timotheé’s life once were.)

“What have you to hide?” Damian asks lowly, pressing his thumb to Timotheé’s cheekbone. “What have you, who has nothing, who admits to having nothing- where have you come from, little bird?”

It does not occur to Timotheé that the wetness on his cheeks are tears until the prince is backing away from him with horror in his eyes and a blank face. A slender finger, pale and shaking, wipes away one of the tears, and he looks at it before staring at Prince Damian’s frozen figure. He cannot breathe, he cannot speak, he cannot stop the shaking sobs that wrack his skinny body- and so Timotheé shoves his way off the wall and flees the room, feet slapping against the stone, sandals left behind, beside the crimson and gold cushions he had been sitting on.

He runs and he runs and his hip hurts, and he cannot breathe even more now that he is on his knees beneath the canopy of bougainvillea, pressing the sweet smell of grass beneath his palms and letting his tears slide down his cheeks until they drop into the damp ground to mingle with the scent of rain, his sobs blending with the thunder above.

“Please,” he rasps, closing his eyes, feeling the heat and the sting of tears, the ache in his nose as it threatens to run.

And he collapses onto the green.

###  _The Third Night: Fever_

Timotheé spends the third day and the third night in a sick haze, fevered and tossing and turning in a bed that he does not remember. It is not the bed he has slept in, not the one that Rikard wakes him from, and so he clutches at the bedcovers in distress when he finally finds a moment of lucidity. Blue eyes watch him from the shadows, darkening when Damian steps forward to press a rough hand to his forehead.

“You are a fool,” he tells Timotheé.

“If I was not,” Timotheé says weakly, closing his eyes and trying not to press into the cool touch of Damian’s elegant fingers, “I would have never gotten here.”

(Damian does not say that he rather Timotheé’s foolishness lead him here than the alternative, that Timotheé would never cross his path. He has tried his best, but over the months of healing and the past two nights, it has become clear to him. Timotheé is nothing if not a mystery, and there is nothing that the son of the world’s greatest detective likes more.)

Timotheé falls asleep on blood-red bedcovers, embroidery like golden floss glinting in the dim light of the bedside lamp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been crossposted with Tumblr.


	3. Cora

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Desert King begins to take (and the Desert Prince begins to give.)

When Timotheé awakes in that strange room in the Prince’s personal quarters, all of his clothing has been replaced with the red of the desert sand, with the red of the dust, with the red of the blood that he cannot scrub out of the deep grain of his memories of his parents. He stirs from his three days of fever with weak hands and blurred eyes, and by the time Rikard comes to give him a cup full of medicine Selina has concocted for him, Timotheé has torn apart the room trying to find something that isn’t red and gold. To find the blue and silver tunic that he had been wearing, the only piece of clothing that had survived his journey here.

“Where have they put my tunic?” he rasps when Rikard grasps his shoulders and settles him down on the bed. He smoothes his fingers through Timotheé’s hair gently, pressing the cup to his lips.

“They burnt it,” Rikard murmurs, sadness on his tongue. Timotheé does not speak, his fingers pressing against Rikard’s cheek and his mouth cold and wordless. “The Desert King ordered it so. He has said that if you are to be sleeping in the Prince’s quarters, if he is caring for you while you are sick, you will be dressed as though you were his- his concubine.” Lover. That is what Ra’s had said, he had called Timotheé the Prince’s lover. But Timotheé does not know this, and Rikard cannot bear to make it harder on him yet.

Timotheé wants to kick and hit. He wants to rail and yell at the Desert King.

 _That was the last piece of my home,_ he wants to scream.  _That was the last piece of my home._

_That piece of cloth was the last thing I had to cling to here in this unfamiliar land. It was the final reminder that I am more than the Desert Prince’s plaything._

_It was the last thing that proved to me that I am a prince in my own right._

_What right do you have to take that from me, Desert King?_

Rikard dresses him in crimson and gold but he feels like he is wearing the funeral shrouds he never had time to properly wrap himself in after his parents’ death. The Prince’s colors are heavy on him, against his pale skin, and he wants to cry when he sees the barely restrained anger in Jason’s eyes.

They know. Rikard and Jason know what Ra’s has taken from him. It burns to realize that they know exactly what that tunic meant to him, and that they feel pain because they could not save it for him. He sits on the window seat all day in the harem quarters with them, letting them coddle him since he cannot escape to the cold of the gardens with his fever still barely edging his temperature up. When the sky darkens, the guards tell them that the Prince is running late, and that Timotheé is to stay in Rikard and Jason’s care until he is sent for.

Rikard sprawls out across the cushions by the fire and Jason bundles Timotheé in blankets, scooping him up despite weak protests and laying him between the two taller men. They hold him tightly in a cocoon of soft murmurs and strong arms.

-

Rikard came from the sea- he came from a land where he could roam free, where he could fly under the canopy of the brightly patterned tent that his family performed in for the delight of all who laid their eyes upon the show.

Jason came from the land that the Prince’s father had come from, Gotham. He had been brought with the Prince’s father, Bruce, as a slave, when he was very young, ‘rescued’ from the slums of Gotham’s poorest outskirts.

Rikard had lost his parents at a very young age the fury of a man who could not bear to see the circus happy, who cut the trapeze while his parents were flying- Rikard saw them fall to the ground and stood, paralyzed, as they landed on either side of him, blood spattering his bare legs.

Jason did not remember his parents at all, aside from the yelling of his father’s harsh voice and a hand smacking across his cheekbone.

But Rikard was happy with the circus, and they roamed with him as their main act, learning to fly just like his parents had, without fear, with grace that was unknown. Until the circus became indebted to the Desert King, and they were brought to perform for the court, knowing all the while that whatever gem the Desert King selected would be locked away in his treasury forever.

They should have known that the Royal Daughter’s Consort would see Rikard fly and want him for his own.

Jason remembers watching Rikard swoop about on invisible wings- he remembers the way that Bruce had leaned over to Talia and whispered in her ear and made her blush. He was only thirteen summers, when that happened, and he remembers, into the soft shadows of the harem quarters, what it was like to know what Bruce and Talia were going to do to Rikard.

He tells Timotheé what it was like to sit on a cushion on the floor and blush hard enough to set fire to his scarves while Bruce held a barely-clad, newly acquired Rikard in his lap and let Talia bend across his broad back and kiss Rikard over one pale, scarred shoulder. He shoves Rikard gently for his smirk, because Rikard knows- he knows that Jason had been hard under his hip scarf, trying to ignore the fact that Rikard was laying Talia out on the cushions beside where he sat in Bruce’s lap and curled back against that wide chest and sipped his chai.

Because Rikard remembers burying his face between Talia’s thighs and making her yank at his hair, and how it made Bruce thrust so hard later that night that Rikard had not been able to get out of bed the next morning. He remembers Talia’s hands, soft and deadly, when they held his hips still so he could not escape the heat of Bruce’s mouth.   
He remembers to them in the light of the fire what it was to be so owned by the Royal Daughter and her Consort that he could not even imagine the touch of another man, the command of another woman.

And he remembers watching the Prince grow up beside them until he was taller than them and more imperious than even his mother and aloof as the mountains that surround the palace.

Timotheé flushes in the amber firelight when Rikard and Jason remember when Jason was finally sixteen summers and he no longer writhed alone in his bed for the sounds of Bruce and Talia taking Rikard apart bit by glorious bit. Rikard and Jason trail their fingers along the edge of Timotheé’s hip, their eyes dark and hungry, and they remember to him the way Bruce had torn the scarves from Jason’s hips and pulled that tanned back against his pale, broad chest, spreading thick, powerful thighs with his own and making Jason cry out into the bedchamber of the Royal Daughter with his hand wrapped around Jason’s aching cock. Rikard tells him of how Talia had gripped his hair and made him still, made him watch Jason’s pleasure ring out into the shadows as Bruce took him, whispered filthy words and made Jason limp and weak with pleasure.

They were the Royal Daughter and her Consort’s lovers until the Royal Daughter Talia and the Consort Bruce decided that their son, the heir to the throne, was old enough to live in the palace on his own, at seventeen summers old. And they had left to travel the world, giving Rikard and Jason each a small tattoo on their left hip, a B and a T intertwined in miniscule font in the middle of a stylized sun, and gifting Rikard and Jason to the Prince Damian’s harem under the condition that the Prince never, ever let them go.

They too were ripped from their families, and they press that comfort into Timotheé’s cheeks when they reluctantly let him up from their comfortable pile of blankets and cushions to let the guards escort him back to the Prince’s personal quarters. Damian is waiting for him, staring into the fire and sipping tea, the bottle of alcohol whose name Timotheé cannot pronounce sitting next to the kettle. He is quiet for a while, the fire crackling, before the tea cup is set down with a barely audible clinking sound.

“You are healed,” the Prince says, barely glancing at him. “You are no longer sick. That is what Selina has told me.”

Timotheé nods.

“I do not have to fear contracting illness from you now,” the Prince splays out a hand on the cushion next to him and pats it, the same cushion Timotheé has been making eye contact with for the nights he has told stories in the past eight days of his official tenure in Damian’s harem. “You shall sit here, tonight.”

He cannot refuse, and so he folds himself onto the cushion on the other side of the table, trying not to touch the heat of the Prince’s body any more than he must. Damian looks at him from the corner of his eye but does not comment on his stiff posture, instead grabbing the bottle of alcohol and pouring a generous amount into his glass.

“You may begin,” Damian murmurs at last, taking another large swallow of the alcohol and closing his eyes, leaning back against another cushion.

“In the land of Eire, there is a legend…”

_There is a legend that there are spirits of the sea, the selkies, that look like they are seals in the daytime; at night, though, they peel off their seal skins and lay on the beach as beautiful women and men, soaking up the moonlight. They are so beautiful that the attention they receive from the humans makes them shy, though, and so it is uncommon to find one or catch one by surprise._

_It is every man’s dream to find a woman as beautiful as a selkie girl, and every woman’s dream to be as beautiful as a selkie girl._

_One day, in a small town, there is a massive storm. It batters the houses and the boats and ruins the nets and the rigging left out. It tears the mast and the sail and makes the people huddle in their houses. The sea is angry, and when it calms, only one is brave enough to venture out to inspect the damage. The man, a lonely fisherman who had been orphaned years and years before, walked the beach, picking up sharp metal pieces so that the children would not step on them and moving kelp aside to form a path to the docks._   
_And then the lonely fisherman moves a mass of kelp and finds a girl._

_She is beautiful, more beautiful than all the sunsets of the world combined, and she lays shivering on the sand, unconscious and pale against the sand. He takes off his sweater and carefully wraps her in it and brings her back to his hearth, placing her in his bed and shoving pots and pans onto the fire stove to heat soup and tea for when she wakes._   
_And when she opens her eyes, she cries for the sea, reaching out blindly for waves she cannot find and a skin she does not have._

_She feels naked, trapped in the dryness of the cottage, and the man cannot help but feel her sadness and her pain just watching her. He agrees to help her find her skin._   
_They look for weeks, all the while getting to know one another, and the lonely man can feel himself falling in love with her. It makes him sad, because he knows as soon as the selkie girl finds her skin she will be beneath the waves and out of reach._

_And he finds the skin on the beach one day, while she is talking to the tailor’s wife up on the ridge. But he cannot find it in himself to give it to her- he cannot bear to lose her. So he folds it up in his pocket, as small as he can, and pretends his search was as fruitless as the days before, the weeks before, the months before._

_In the night, he sneaks out to the cliffs and unfolds it on the ground, looking at the selkieskin of the woman he loves, and he cries onto it, salt and bitter and the desperate love of a man who cannot lose any more pieces of his heart._

_And he knows that he cannot let her go back to the sea- and that if she finds the skin she will slip into it and be gone. He knows that he cannot bear to have that happen-_

_And so the lonely fisherman brings out his knife and lays it on the ground beside the skin._   
_(If the skin does not exist, the selkie girl cannot escape beneath the waves, can she? She will be human- here, forevermore, beside him.)_

_He cuts the skin in two, sawing at the difficult skin for an inordinate amount of time, and then four. In eight, and then sixteen. In thirty two, and then sixty four. And then he flings the pieces into the sea, covered in his tears and the sand of the cliff, and he waters the ground with his sorrow until the lights come on below and the frantic footsteps of the school teacher crunch their way up the cliff._

_“It’s Cora,” the woman yells, her face streaked with tears, and the fisherman stands, fast enough that he almost topples over the edge of the cliff. He runs for the house, runs all the way across the town to the cottage where he had left his beloved sleeping._

_The lights are on, the embers burning, and he can see it on the faces of the villagers._

_“We heard her screaming,” they tell him._ _“But it was too late.”_

_It was too late._

_The fisherman drops to his knees beside the bed, and his sorrow overwhelms the room until they all must cry or be drowned in the tears that drop from the fisherman’s eyes._

_His knife clatters to the ground, the sixty-fourth piece of the selkie skin fluttering beside it, and he weeps into the pieces of his selkie girl, blood soaking the bed beside his white-knuckled fingers._

“He killed the woman he loved just so that he could keep her?” Damian says incredulously, his voice a little thick with alcohol and his fingers twitching lazily at the tassel of his belt.

“He didn’t know it would kill her,” Timotheé traces the paisley of the pillow he’s sitting on. “He wanted to destroy the skin so that he could keep her, but it was too much a part of her for her to live without it.”

“What is the moral, then?” Damian sneers slightly, opening his eyes just enough to look up at Timotheé. “Do not saw your lover into bits?”

“Do not presume to change them,” Timotheé murmurs gently. “He could not change the part of Cora which loved the sea, and he knew that. But he tried, and in the end, he wanted her to be the woman he wanted to love rather than the woman she was.” Timotheé’s lip quirked. “Or, I suppose, it could always be ‘if you love something let it go’?”

“So another can have them?” Damian snorted.

“If they love you back, they will return.”

“Do you know that from experience, Timotheé?” the Prince turned his icy blue eyes on him, and Timotheé could not help his fingers clenching in the scarves. “Never?” Damian laughed, low and deep and tempered in a way that made Timotheé shiver. “You have not loved another?”

“Have  _you_?” he snapped, turning his face from Damian’s gaze. The room was silent.

He stood to leave.

“His name was Colin,” Damian murmured, when Tim strapped his first sandal on.

“He died of a disease that had ravaged him from the very moment he was born, years ago.” Damian said, when Tim strapped his second sandal on.

“He was not strong enough to stay by my side. But in the time that he did…” Damian downed another half a cup of alcohol and wiped his mouth against the burn. “I  _did_  love him. He was beautiful and quiet and he was far too old for his years. Grandfather… liked him. Colin was stubborn enough to stand up to the mighty Desert King. He respected and admired that.” Damian’s eyes narrowed on Timotheé, and he sat up, drawing his hand down his torso to claim a stray droplet of drink and lick it off his thumb. “He was like you, in that way, headstrong and far too beautiful for an ordinary man.”

Timotheé flushed, shoving at the side door that lead down a corridor to his new bedchamber, and Damian laughed that woodsmoke laugh again.

“Goodnight,” he tried to say, quiet as a mouse, but he could not make the handle turn. He could hear Damian’s footsteps coming towards him on the stone, and he pushed harder.

“You look beautiful in my colors,” Damian breathed out, his fingers covering Timotheé’s on the knob and pushing the door open. “Dream well, little bird.”

Timotheé did not breathe again until he reached his bed.


	4. The Man of Two Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The safety of Timotheé's anonymous refuge has been shaken.

The Diplomatic Season officially begins at ten AM, and Timotheé watches silently from behind a veil and a tree as the gates to the palace open and the caravan from Schatten enters. The Desert King has a very strict policy- routine diplomatic visits may only be conducted during a certain part of the year. Otherwise, he doesn’t like to be disturbed unless a world war has broken out, or an urgent proposal has come in from the League of Sovereigns. He sees the flag, orange and black slashed across each other, and his fingers tremble as he presses the back of his hand to his mouth through the veil.

The wooden carriage opens, and he stifles a whimper, slumping against the trunk of the tree and trying to breathe as the man of two colors sets foot on the pavers, shattering Timotheé’s sanctuary into million pieces.

He does not eat very well at the afternoon meal, picking at his crepes and the rose water and honey flavoured pistachio kulfi, and when there is a knock on the door, he slumps down over his food as though his invisible marionette strings have been cut. A barely audible creaking of hinges, and-

“You will receive the most high Prince Damian and his guest, the honorable Knight Slade of Schatten in these chambers now,” the soldier says, voice professional and face guarded carefully as he looks at them. He pities them, and Timotheé can see it, though he doesn’t quite know why (he can guess but he doesn’t want to.) The soldier cannot possibly think they are in danger, with the Prince there, but something in his demeanor puts Timotheé on edge. He sits up, straight and more regal than even his mother ever was, eyes sharp and jagged with painful memories, watching the doorway. It’s clear that Dité and Jason are not worried at all, as they lounge on cushions, playing backgammon with sloppy hands that leave the pieces in a cheerful disarray.

And when the man of two colors enters the room with Prince Damian at his side, Timotheé does not let his shock show.

For he knew it, did he not? Did he not know it all along? The man of two colors, heartless killer that slashed the veins of his mother and father for mere pennies of Schatten monies, the man who spilled Bristollen blood across the stones and grinned at him, savage and soaked in the crimson remnants of his parents’ lives. Timotheé can see the fierce, wild joy in the Knight Slade’s functional eye from where he sits at the table with his cup of tea- he can tell that Slade is pleased at this turn of events, that he has been fortunate enough to gain even more time than he’d expected to play with his prey and bat Timotheé around like a cat would a mouse.

Timotheé knows Slade had thought it over when he left the young heir bleeding out on the sands, but no- that war deity, the Schatten-Gott, seems to have left its supplicant, the mighty, bloodthirsty knight Slade, a perfect stage to torment the prey that was thought forfeit and buried in the obscurity of the red dunes.

He clamps his fingers down on the scarf end that rests in his lap and tries with all his will not to beg and plead at the Prince to throw Slade out. All that would give him is a swift imprisonment and a slow death for interfering with diplomacy.  _Don’t hate me_ , he thinks to Dité and Jason where they’re eyeing the knight with interest- Jason with disdain and Dité with a blatant seductive slant. _Don’t hate me for the wrath for me and my kind that he’ll take out on you._

“Rikard,” Damian narrows his eyes at Timotheé for a moment before flicking them lazily over at the acrobat. “I have told Slade that he might enjoy your company tonight. You will take dinner with him in his quarters. You will not leave him unsatisfied with your hospitality.”

“If it is your will,” Dité says, his voice making it clear that it is certainly not  _his_  will. He does not want this- he does not wish to leave with Slade for quarters where no guard could hope to intervene on his behalf. But he will go nonetheless, and it burns Timotheé’s throat to think of what he will endure against his wishes.

“It is,” Damian clears his throat and stands impossibly taller. “It is my will that you entertain our guest.”

And they all know what that means- Dité is expected to sleep with Slade, whether he likes it or not. Jason’s fingers are clenching in the tassels and Dité’s smile is fading fast, but it’s not them that stand up and let their eyes flash.

(Because Timotheé knows what Slade will do to them. He knows the touch of killing-calloused fingers that glide across skin and hurt bone deep when they dig in to soft flesh. He knows that pressing weight in the rib cage when those elbows trap your knees to a broad rib cage and you can’t do anything but cry into the pillow and wish that he would just end you like he’d promised. He knows what the man of two colors will do to you when the doors are closed and the lights are low, and his throat blocks up on memories he wants to burn up into ash until they can be forgotten.)

“He is not a  _plaything_ ,” Timotheé says, struggling to keep the dangerous notes out his voice and failing miserably. Slade clearly wants to laugh, arms crossed upon an orange and black chest- Damian is not amused. “You cannot command him to entertain whoever you please, your  _highness_.”

“You’ll find, Timotheé,” the prince tells him, glittering blue eyes and a shark’s smile, “that I can do whatever I  _damn_  well want. And what I  _want_  is for Dité to show the _honorable_  Knight Slade that we are courteous and  _providing_  here in the Desert Kingdom.”

“Perhaps if Timotheé is so keen to offer himself upon a chopping block to defend the sanctity of his fellows’ wills, I should enjoy his company more,” Slade says, amusement clear in his smirk.

“They are  _slaves_ , Slade,” Damian scoffs, stepping aside and waving to Dité. “Their will is of no consequence. Take Rikard and be gone with you to your rooms, before I decide you shall have none of me and mine. I shall have dinner sent to you at the appropriate time- I trust that tomorrow you will be on time for the diplomatic luncheon and the gala.” Dité goes with him, the nod that Slade gives Damian on the way out not reassuring Timotheé in the least. He fists his hands in the loose fabric of his pants when the door swings shut.

“We are lower than the lowest,” he murmurs bitterly, not daring to look at what he is sure is an expression of monumental displeasure on Damian’s face. “We are lower than the fucking  _horses_  you drag your benighted selves around on.” His cheeks redden with anger- sandal steps scrap on pavers and Damian’s hand grasps his chin none too gently.

“You’re a  _slave_ ,” he tells the shorter man, his grip tightening until it stings and aches and tears form in Timotheé’s eyes. “You’re a slave, Timotheé, no matter whether you sleep in the harem or in the bloody royal consort’s quarters of my  _grandfather_.”

“And so do we not matter in the slightest, your highness?” Timotheé spits out, trying to shove at the prince’s chest with open palms. Damian snarls, his fingers tightening even further. Gazes lock, a storming sea of iris to that of the clearest twilight blue- he tries not to whimper at the pain in his jaw.

“No,” Damian squeezes once and lets go, stepping back and dusting his hands off on his pants. “You do not.”

“That man is a  _murderer_ ,” he shoves at the prince’s chest again, unable to budge him, and he can feel the tears escaping his eyes. “He is a cold blooded killer and a thief, a fucking thief who takes what isn’t his and stomps on the hearts of everyone he’s ever dragged down into the coldest goddamn hell, Damian-”

“ _Enough_.” The prince’s voice thunders through the chamber, his feet turning until his back is to the crying man. He doesn’t look back, not even as he walks from the chamber and pauses, briefly at the door. “I expect you in my quarters at the tenth bell, Timotheé.”

Timotheé sinks to the ground and weeps into his scarves and Jason, all Jason can do is cradle him up and wish that he were strong enough to dry those tears and know that it would, truly, be all right.

—

“Sit beside me again,” the prince tells him, nonchalant and without emotion, fingers playing across the hilt of a dagger laid out on their low table. (When he began thinking of it as their table, he does not know- only that every night, it is the one they gather to so that he can spin tales like the gold Rumplestiltskin once spun for the girl who was foolish enough to barter her own flesh and blood. Timotheé is not so naive, nor so willing to let go of what precious few droplets of blood remain and what wasted flesh he can barely cling to.) And the prince acts as though their earlier spat hadn’t happened at all, when he pats the cushion beside him and waits for Timotheé to sit.

“You will be coming with me to the diplomatic luncheons and the gala,” Damian trails a finger along the outside of Tim’s thigh where it lays expose by a slit in his loose silk pants. “It is customary for each diplomat to have his or her own personal attendant that can dine with the company and act as a safeguarding party to the civility and limit the discussion of top-secret and very sensitive materials at the table. Meals are not for the discussion of business, Timotheé, and you shall ensure that it stays that way.” Dark eyes look up at him from where Damian is laying on the cushions, and Timotheé swallows heavily. “You will not fight me before the diplomats again.”

“No,” he says softly, looking away and breaking their shared gaze. “I will not.”

Fingers slide into the slide and Damian rests his massive, sword-calloused hand flat acros Timotheé’s milk white thigh, spanning across most of it and curving under with a broad, strong thumb. His breath is hitching a little in his chest when Damian leans over to press his mouth to the space in between one tan finger and another.

“If there is a grievance to be spoken, it shall be done when we are here, in this space, little bird,” he murmurs, closing his eyes slowly and lying back in his own space, his fingers still pressing warmly against Timotheé’s skin.

“Am I not still your slave in these rooms?” Damian opened one eye, his lip twitching minutely.

“You are my storyteller.” His fingers pressed harder for a moment before he took a deep breath and his eye slid shut again- Timotheé can feel the blood rising in his face at the term, because- that, that is nothing like a slave at all. Not here, not anywhere. “Now, on with it, then. The story. Don’t keep me waiting.” Timotheé takes a deep breath.

“The Grecian elders tell of a time, a time long ago, when humans had four arms, four legs, and two heads…”

_They were smarter and faster than any animal on earth, and they knew it. With two heads, twice the amount of thinking could be done- they could complete any task as they wished and their empire grew rapidly. Aqueducts, stone buildings, fountains studded with cobalt glass and copper statuettes spouting the freshest water for the children to frolic in._

_But soon, with the land conquered, the humans turned to the skies. They were not satisfied with the earth alone. They built great airships and weapons that shot fire and metal to destroy all in their path. They held meetings and shouted at the heavens._

_“We are coming for you,” they cried to the clouds, shaking their spears and loading their cannons._

_They were determined to take the land of the Gods for themselves._

_But the great god Zeus would not stand for it, and he stomped his feet on the clouds and rained great floods down upon the humans. He shook his head and clapped his hands, and the mountains split with the force of his anger when he stepped down from the land of the gods and stood on a great pedestal in front of all humanity._

_“You are too great,” he told them, his eyes flashing furiously. “And you have risen too far. You cannot oust us, the gods.”_

_They did not listen._

_And so he took up his staff and slammed it to the ground once, twice, thrice, and their screams rent the air._

_“Those who are the highest have the farthest to fall,” Zeus told them as they writhed on the ground, blood staining their lips. “You shall not rise this high again.”_

_And with another slam of his staff to the ground, he split each human in two. Those humans who were one part female and one part male split into a single male and a single female, cold and apart on the ground. Where a female and a female once stood as one, two women cried into the dust at the loss. Where a male and a male once were inseparable, two men tore at the grass and wailed to the sky for the absence of their other half._

_Zeus had torn them in two; two hand and two legs, two feet and two arms, one head and one body, and half of one heart._

_“Kill us,” they cried, as the other gods descended and crushed the remnants of the society, sweeping it all away and laying to waste the progress the humans had made. “We cannot live so empty and so torn.”_

_But Zeus would not kill them._

_He scattered them with a mighty breath, blowing them to every corner of the earth and watching as they spun, disoriented, unable to remember, unable to find their other half and recognize them on sight any longer._

_“If you find your other half,” he told them, staff clenched in regretful fingers. “You will become whole again.”_

_“If you find your other half, your half-heart will fit with theirs like two interlocking pieces of a cosmic puzzle, and you will never break apart.”_

_And he left, returning to the palace in the skies, and the humans cried into the dirt and watered their crops with tears of pain and loss, wandering the earth until they could find their other half._

_Some of them do, and their hearts lock together, and they do not part until their time has come to leave the earth altogether. Some of them never do, and they spend their days lonely and aching for a human they will never meet. Some of them make do and they force their hearts into poorly matched puzzles, cutting the pieces to fit._

_But they will never reach the pinnacle they had found before._

Damian’s fingers tightened on his thigh again, breath pooling in the crevices of fabric that expose his skin. He tries not to shiver, eyes locked on the fire. The embers are crackling, now, low light that gilds the room- it is late and he can feel himself becoming sleepy, but he does not want to return to his room.

The rooms here in Damian’s quarters, the ones where he now sleeps, are cold and impersonal, and low laughter never seeps through from the common areas like it does in the harem when Jason and Dité stay up later than they should.

“I think that is why my grandfather never remarried,” Damian whispers, lips brushing milk skin. Timotheé itches to brush back that dark hair where it falls across a fold of fabric and obscures most of Damian’s forehead. He wants to run his fingertip along the furrow in that brow and press it back into smoothness, and he thinks, against his will, how peaceful Damian must look in sleep. (He looks peaceful even now, with the frown twisting his handsome face, and when he slumbers he must calm all those around him.)

“Did he have a wife?” Timotheé clutches at the fabric of the cushion, Damian’s thumb stroking the underside of his thigh again.

“Melisande,” Damian sighs, a gust of breath. “Many kings of the desert have fathered children with a concubine or a consort, and never truly married a queen to share the throne. But my grandfather did. He fell in love with her when he saw her on the crowded floor of a ball in the northern country. There were musicians playing, and she was entranced by them. He commissioned them to play a song for her, and he wooed her by candlelight that night.” Damian’s eyes slide open lazily, gazing up at Timotheé. “He loved her with all that he was, and all that he is, and all that he ever will be. But she died long ago, when my mother was but a small child. My mother cannot remember her, but my grandfather can remember her too much.”

“She must have been a lovely woman,” he murmurs, fingers inching hesitantly towards Damian. Almost without his permission, they move, and he brushes the hair back from piercing blue eyes, his cheeks flooding red when he yanks his hand back and jerks his head to look back at the embers once more. A small, pleased sound escapes Damian’s throat though, and long fingers tug at his, twining them through silky hair and coaxing him into petting the prince laid out at his lap.

It is an apology, and he knows it. Damian cannot tell him that he is sorry for letting Dité go to a man that they all know is a murderer, for letting Dité go to the bed of a man who cares less for a life than for what he’ll eat for supper. But he is, somewhere. He is sorry for distressing Timotheé so.

In the shape of his fingers on Timotheé’s skin, he can hear the way Damian angers, for the man of two colors has done something unspeakable, has made Timotheé fear for his safety even under the mighty protection of the Desert King.

And he sits there, in the fading firelight, and lets himself stroke through the Desert Prince’s hair and soak in the apologies and the making-ups for what the man of two colors has done.


	5. The Gala

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night of the first Diplomatic Gala has arrived. 
> 
> A note of warning: This chapter deals with sensitive subject matter at times. Consider this your warning for adult themes (attempted rape/sexualized violence, nonconsensual drugging.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The playlist I created, inspired by this chapter, is available here: 
> 
> http://www.mediafire.com/?ku8dinenz6x6p

  
Timotheé is rather certain that he smells as though he tripped and fell into a vat of vanilla paste, and freesia petals were smushed upon his skin, and coconuts were cracked over his head. In the morning, Selina had come to his room with armfuls of silk fabric and a servant carrying boxes full of fragrances and pastes and colors and concoctions, and Timotheé had been helpless to her will ever since.

“It is your first gala with the Prince,” she tells him, stripping him unceremoniously- he cannot  _technically_  deny it, because it  _is_  true. “You must look absolutely best. There will be no other slave who can hope to stand up to your radiance, little bird, and Prince Damian will not have it any other way.”

He cannot technically deny  _that_  either, because Damian  _has_  told him that he must be at his very best for this event.

And so here he sits, hours later, watching the fading sun out his window and waiting for the Prince or a guard to come fetch him for the dinner that will precede the gala itself. Dité will be there, he’s sure of it. Jason says that the Desert King never hesitates to show Dité off, to make him bend himself and dance around the gala in a way that makes all jealous of the strange and beautiful foreign commodity of body that Dité has.

Timotheé himself is dressed in clothes he’s never worn before. Silk, brightly colored and brilliantly patterned in the red and gold that mark him as the Prince’s and only the Prince’s, wrapped around his lithe form. Henna swirls across his pale moon skin, designs that seem to move fluidly when Timotheé stands or waves a hand. He cannot help but touch his finger gently to the gold and rubies that adorn his earlobes, or the garnets that glimmer like thick blood at his throat. His feet are bare no longer, dust-red toe paint invisible, hidden by the deep gold sandals that cover his toe and strap up his leg.

Selina had told him that he was beautiful as she was painting his delicate mouth with rouge and dusting sparkled mica powder over his cheekbones and nose. She had exclaimed over the blue-blue of his eyes when she brushed sparkling gold across the lids and dragged thick kohl along the edge, outlining it before she brushed through his lashes with thick black paste and made his eyes out to be the true gravity of his face.

He did not want to smell of perfume, but she had insisted, pushing past his grimace and pulling out a metal atomizer, spraying the scented oils across his body until he was certain that there was no part of him that did not smell of the vanilla-bean pods the royal gardeners took and dried from the delicate orchids of the greenhouses.

He feels like a breakfast pastry, or one of those delicate little cakes that the cook serves with tea every other day. His teeth are sugar pearls and his bones are sugar sculptures, his face an iced cake and his cheeks two candied cherries to match the sugar plum of his lips. The sheer half-gloves feel strange on his hands- he can’t help picking at them. They make him feel removed from the world, now that he cannot feel the textures of his surroundings.

“Don’t pull them off before we’ve even gotten to the dinner,” Damian says dryly from the doorway (and he can’t help the way his heart picks up as he whirls around. Surely he’s out of breath from the surprise,  _not_  from the way the Desert Prince looks.) And there he stands, regal in the same colors that adorn Timotheé. On Damian, though… They look richer, fuller- they are the colors he was born into. They are the colors that he owns. Colors that he  _rules_.

His fingers close around Timotheé’s, and he pulls him up from his seat. His eyes are lined with kohl too, dark on his face, oceans with fathomless depths, and he presses a gentle thumb to Timotheé’s cheek.

“Selina did well,” he says, slow and blank, before he turns to the door. “Come, we cannot be late.”

He follows, tucking the knowledge that Damian is pleased away like a dried flower from a lover, held close in a pocket of his heart. And the closer they get to the ballroom, Damian slowing his long strides so that Timotheé can keep up and not trip over his trailing silks, the music grows louder and louder. A full band, instruments creating a harmonized frenzy.

And then they enter the Desert King’s gala, and Timotheé nearly stumbles backwards: indeed, he would have, had the prince not been directly behind him. Music, swelling into a crescendo, the swing so favored by the dance halls of the Anglas Union; dancers, scantily clad, writhing around dignitaries from Schatten and dipping themselves on stage, twining around each other in costumes that flooded Timotheé’s cheeks with red. Damian’s brow furrows and he frowns down at Timotheé when the smaller man tries to hide his blush in his scarf. Elegant fingers tug the scarf down, and he cups Timotheé’s powdered cheek.

“Do not blush for  _this_ , Timotheé,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to the curve of one pale, adorned ear. “It is merely a distraction.”

“Ah, you’ve brought dear Timotheé,” Slade purrs from behind Timotheé and he has to clutch at Damian’s tunic so that he does not run instinctively away. “I do hope he’s being more…  _acquiescing_  to you, Prince Damian. I found your slave rather  _recalcitrant_  last night.” His lip is going to bleed, Timotheé thinks distantly, trying to stop his jaw from clenching because Dité. Damian’s eyes are the only part of his body showing his displeasure, hisanger, when the prince straightens to look Slade in the eye.

“I hope you did not damage my slave, Slade,” he says levelly. “There are consequences to desecrating my property.”

“He’s not  _very_  damaged,” Slade laughs, a rough hand on Dité’s shoulder shoving him forward, away from Slade and towards Damian and Timotheé. “He’ll heal up just fine.”   
Timotheé wants to grab a lantern from a nearby table and dash it over that knowing smirk and set the whole palace ablaze, but Dité- he grasps Timotheé’s forearms and kisses the corner of his rouged lips, smiling at him with all the bravery of a man who has spent his entire life being objectified and used for entertainment.

“I’m fine,” he whispers into Timotheé’s perfumed hair, canting their bodies together to let Damian pass him, let Damian stand in front of them and block them from Slade’s view.   
But the bruises on his wrists, poorly covered with concealer (though surely it was Selina’s best work), make Timotheé struggle back. Dité’s lips press behind his ear, arms wrapping about Timotheé, bangles clattering together.

“He cannot harm me any more,” Dité murmurs soothingly, stroking Timotheé’s shoulderblade. “Let us find Jason, hmm? Damian can handle Slade alone. It wouldn’t do to make a scene, little bird.” He can’t help glancing back at Damian, prince and knight locked in heated discussion- his stomach turns at Slade’s smirk and he lets Dité tug him away, towards the shadowed, draped corners that Jason is lurking in.

Jason cracks the table with the force of his anger when he sees Dité’s wrists. Slender fingers press against his clenched jaw though, and Dité kisses him, soft and sweet, until he settles. Until the three of them settle, watching the burlesque and standing back from the fray of diplomats and envoys partaking in the glorious distraction the Desert King has provided. It’s a disorienting mix of wine and women, of sweets and slaves, of mayhem and men that slither on stage.

The women that pass by have peacock feathers in their hair, curls piled high atop their heads and turquoise silks draped across their breasts, sheer enough that they are not so much covering them but rather highlighting them with brilliant color. Their hips sway, oiled hinges, the deep blue and gold of the fabric fluttering across the top of their thighs. Timotheé can smell the sex from here- Dité giggles helplessly into Jason’s shoulder when they’re finally out of earshot.

There are men at the stage nearest to them, wrapped around poles and each other. They’re not wearing anything at all, really, golden bands around their arms and legs and henna and cobalt dripped across them in intricate designs. A fuchsia scarf does nothing for modesty, simply wrapped around their hips to keep their silhouettes streamlined.

And there are androgynes curled together on beds on the far stage- Timotheé cannot see well enough to tell whether they are male or female, their lithe figures spread out and connected, stretched and touching, oiled and writhing where they fuck on stage, on pillowed mattresses of deep aquamarine and silver threading.

It is, put simply, debauchery.

Dité and Jason try to ply him with wine, try to get him to relax before the banquet is called as an intermission to this gala. He supposes they can indulge- they will sit with the common diplomats and the rest of the convoy from Schatten at the banquet. He, however, must sit at Damian’s side, the first seat on the right, directly across the table from the Knight Slade. And Timotheé does not fancy letting his guard down for even a second of that time. He cannot let himself be distracted, for if he slips, Slade will take advantage of it.

The man of two colors does not lose battles, and he and Timotheé are in the dirty trenches of one right this moment.

-

When the banquet is called, Damian appears, grasping Timotheé’s still-gloved hand gently and tugging at the fingertips, sliding the gloves off and pressing his warm hands to Timotheé’s. He cannot feel, for a moment, and then- the heat of Damian’s, strong and calloused, press to his- it is a sensory overload after an evening of being unable to feel, and his thought stumbles off at the sensation.

“You have not drunk any wine,” Damian says, fathomless depths locked on Timotheé.

“I have not.”

“But you must, with the meal, or you risk a faux pas we cannot afford, not with Slade here ready to exploit every weakness.” His lips twitch for a moment before he closes his eyes, briefly, resting his hand on the small of Timotheé’s back. “My grandfather is planning something.” Damian murmurs, half a laugh, an afterthought to put Timothée on guard. His lips press one to the back of Timotheé’s hand, and then he is leading Timotheé into the banquet with a hand on his far hip, thumb pressing to the sliver of bared skin the color of a full peach moon in summer.

“ _Do not fear_ ,” he whispers in Timotheé’s ear before he settles him in his chair and sits at the head of the table, the exact opposite of the Desert King. The highest diplomats of both Arabâya and Schatten sit, smiling and laughing, half drunk on spiced wine and hungry for that finest delicacies that the Desert King’s cooks have been laboring over all day and night.

The wine is exquisite, as Timotheé would expect, but it is honeyed in a way he would not have. It is thick on his tongue, and he tries to hide his confusion, looking first at the prince and then back at his plate (and he swears he could see Ra’s glittering at him in amusement from the other end of the mahogany table, but he dares not look at the Desert King for fear of ruining whatever plot has been set and endangering himself.) The food is nothing like he’s seen these past few months- for the food here is wonderful, but this… This is the level of the state dinners of Bristollen, the only meals he ever ate with his parents, and he bites the inside of his cheek because he can feel his eyes stinging when he looks to either side of him and his parents are not there.

The first course- mushroom tart, flaking away in his mouth and cracking apart into buttery bits. (He knows for a fact it’s a favorite of Damian’s, and he cannot help but wonder what Ra’s is trying to appease Damian for, for this is surely bribery.) And then goat cheese, chives and garlic, melting on toasts of oiled bread that crunch satisfyingly.

The second course- onion soup, floating in rich beefy broth and cheese grated over the top that bubbles and browns under the torch before the servant sets it before him. It’s chewy, satisfying, rich soft onions that melt away and smooth the sharpness of the cheese. It’s gone before he wants it to be, and he almost considers asking for more, but he supposes he can always have them make it for him again.

The third course; sharp and tangy greens and bits of crackling, browned, salted pork mixed in, olives and vinegar and mustard and herbs coating the leaves that taste clean after the almost overpowering richness of the soup.

The fourth course, and he puts a finger to his temple briefly, face warming. The room is hotter now. He can’t tell if it’s because of all the people so close, or the night, or the spiced wine, but he sighs inaudibly when another glass is set before him and Damian’s fingers press his to the stem, urging him to drink. The cool citrus of the frothy, light lemon ice d’Italie sends cold shivers down his spine, and he can feel the red in his cheeks by the time the fifth course is set before him.

The shrimp goes fast, a garlic cream sauce that coats each bite wonderfully and pairs with the buttery rich pasta it sits on, and then the sixth course is on his plate.

Leeks and beef and lager and onion, simmered together in a thick stew, melt apart on his plate, salty and thick on his tongue. It is delicious, just like anything else, but the room is spinning slightly and he feels like he’s jumping out of his skin. His stomach is shivery, a sharp panging ache running down his spine and pooling at the base, and he is waiting for the seventh course when it hits him.

He is aroused.

He’s flushed and dazed and wanting, in the middle of a diplomatic dinner. The diplomat next to him, a kind old woman from Schatten, asks him if he’s feeling well, and he barely manages to stutter out an affirmative without letting a moan escape his throat at the way the silk is sliding across his groin every time he shifts.

He can hardly taste the  _om ali_ , cardamom on his tongue and honey in his nose and thick, drugging want threading through his veins.

And he needs to tell Damian, because this is it- this is what Ra’s had been planning. Because the Desert King knows. He knows who Timotheé is, and he knows that Slade is the one who tried to kill him. He knows that Slade will stop at nothing to take Timotheé from the safety of the Desert Kingdom, and he knows that Slade has already begun trying.   
Ra’s knows that Damian has already become displeased with Slade’s behavior, and he wants to distract Damian from the diplomatic conference so that he can negotiate with Schatten alone when the dawn breaks on the gala and the festivities officially turn to diplomacy.

And Timotheé cannot let that happen. ( _For what would he be to the prince if he let himself be used like a pawn? For what good is a slave who is smart enough to know when he is but a piece of the play and still allow it to happen to the detriment of the man he is loyal to?_ )

The people are standing all around him, swirling in the haze of purple that has taken apart the corners of his vision- he takes Damian’s hand and stands, letting the scarves hide his groin, and he sets down the glass with shaking hands, the last of the aphrodisiac that is presumably in its depths still wallowing in the bowl of the crystal. (Not that it matters, because he’s already spinning with its effects.)

“If you’ll excuse me, your highness,” he murmurs to Damian. “I’m not feeling well.”

“I will have you escorted back to your quarters,” Damian says, strident, low and serious, and Timotheé tries not to let the flint of the prince’s voice spark more fires in his stomach.

“I will be fine,” he says, presses his hand to Damian’s forearm and smiles in what he hopes is a reassuring manner.

And he leaves the banquet hall, dark blue eyes boring into the silk on his back, the coolness of the corridor outside as welcome as a cold compress on his fevered brow. He stumbles but he does not fall, pressing his bare palms to the walls and making his way back to the room slowly but steadily.

And in his spinning state, as he opens the door to his room, he does not hear the soft footfalls that make their way down the corridor behind him.

Rough hands wrap around his wrists and his chest hits the opening door, his feet tripping over one another and sliding on the silk of his halfway-undone hip scarf, and he falls through into his room, stumbling to his knees.

The door slams shut- he looks up, into the smirk of the man of two colors.

“Pretty, pretty bird,” Slade drawls, bending down and cupping his chin, grinning wide and savage before drawing his hand back and smacking Timotheé across the cheekbone, sending him reeling onto the stones. Thick thighs, armored well, straddle his, and he can’t fight off the dizziness that overwhelms him, the heat that doesn’t recognize the threat, the arousal that will not stop even now.

“Do you fuck him?” Slade asks, hot breath across Timotheé’s jawline when his head lolls to the side and he shoves at Slade’s chest weakly.

His laughter makes Timotheé sick to his stomach, drags a whimper of pain from his throat- and Slade just laughs harder.

“He drugged you, pretty boy, powder in your wine,” Slade murmurs, rough fingers ripping scarves from Timotheé’s body and leaving him bare-chested in the dim light of the lanterns. “Is that how he gets you to fuck him? Does he drug you up and fuck you raw at night?” His palm cracked across Timotheé’s other cheek and the mercenary knight sucked in an aroused breath. “I bet he doesn’t  _have_  to drug you, little whore.” Timotheé thinks he’s going to be sick, roiling stomach and conflicting arousal and fever clouding up the inside of his brain. It’s screaming at him, screaming at him, beating at the sides of his skull, but he can’t-

_It’s just like the last time._

“Now that you’re not a virginal little saint,” Slade spits out, thumbs hooking in the silk around Timotheé’s waist and rending it fiercely, tearing it off. “Not since I dirtied you up, hmm? Fucked that holy flaw right out of your tight little ass, little princess-” His teeth edge against Timotheé’s ear, and he- he’s seeing red, drowning in the hurt and confusion of that night.

Covered in his parents blood and laid out on the floor, clothes ripped off and Slade’s hands bruising his hips, hungry mouth that licks away the tears he’s crying. Desecrated and left cold on the stones, Slade promising to return to finish the job in the morning.  
Limping away in the dark of the night and fleeing for the freedom, only to feel the rending pain of a sword clean through his hip when he finally reaches the red dunes of the Desert Kingdom.

That harsh thumb presses to the pink, aching scar of the wound, and Slade laughs again, filling up the room with his poisonous breath.

He cries out, and silk smothers him, rough fingers pressing down on his tongue and shoving the scarf into his throat. There are tears on his cheeks-

“Now, now, don’t cry,” Slade mocks, towering above him and edged in that purple haze. “I’m only going to hurt you a little bit.”

But neither of them heard the footsteps, clattering down the hallway on the stones, and the door bangs open with a finality that Timotheé welcomes, his arms still struggling fruitlessly against the wide hand that has trapped both wrists to the floor of his bedroom.

“You will unhand him,” Damian growls, his voice thundering. Timotheé can see the glint of Ra’s crown in the shadows behind his prince, spears of guards and gasps of women. 

Slade’s face is furious- Timotheé cannot dodge that one last hit, a fist that knocks across his jaw and sends shocks of pain through his head, draws whimpers from his raw throat behind the gagging silk. Damian’s sword is at Slade’s throat the next moment, Ra’s’ hand on Damian’s forearm holding him back from gutting the knight without any forethought. 

And everything spins once, twice, and-

All is black.

He comes to to the feeling of strong fingers carding through his hair, silence ringing around him, the softness of a bed beneath him. The world is still swirling around him, purple haze still edging his vision, and he cannot help but squirm and moan softly beneath the touch.

The fingers stop- he opens his eyes to a blank-faced Damian, sitting cross legged on the empty side of the mattress. It’s not one that he recognizes particularly, a massive ocean of a four poster bed in the middle of a huge chamber with three fireplaces, all of them blazing away and gilding the room amber with their light.

“This is the second time you’ve had to drag me to a bed with a fever,” he says weakly, clearing his throat and moving his hand, heavy with the drug, to lay over the prince’s.

“My grandfather drugged you,” Damian looks away from him for a brief moment before that hawk-sharp gaze focuses on his flushed face once more. “He jeopardized your safety, leaving you vulnerable to that man, who had already show harmful intentions towards you.”

“It was not meant in harm,” Timotheé presses his fingers to the tendons on the back of the prince’s hand, and his head lolls on the pillow, rolling to lay his cheek in the palm of the other hand that lays limp on the pillowcase.

“Then how was it meant,” Damian turned away again. “How was it meant to happen, Timotheé?”

“It was meant for you, darling prince,” he said softly, closing his eyes when Damian’s fingers curled about his. “For you were meant to enjoy the night, not worry over diplomacy and rogue knights.”

“I was meant to enjoy you, drugged on an aphrodisiac and drunk on wine?” the prince’s voice sounded incredulously, echoing in the chamber. “Against your will? As Slade tried to?”

Timotheé pressed his still-rouged lips to Damian’s palm and breathed deep the perfume of the desert night upon his skin, drawing up the words in his still-choked throat.

“It would not have been against my will.”

Fingers card through his hair again, and he lets it be, drifting off on the cloud of the bed that he is now certain must be the prince’s.

And he swears that just before he slips into a drugged sleep, he can feel wind and sun chapped lips press gently to his, the vague slickness of rose balm leaving an impression on parted lips, slack with almost-sleep.


	6. Mother's Child & Silver Fish Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Interludes.

_**Mother's Child** _

When he was a little boy, his mother did not tell him fairytales. 

She sat him on the stones by the pond her father had built for her, and cradled her in his lap, and spread all of history across the back of his eyelids. (If he tries hard enough, he can smell her gardenia perfume and feel the cool, gentle touch of her fingertips, coaxing his eyelids shut.)

And she spoke, high and reverent, of the ancestors in the mountains, building their castles from the peaks themselves.

And she gestured, wide and vibrant, showing him swords made of air that pierce the ancestor’s invisible, long dead enemies. 

And she would shout out the victory, gathering him up in her soft, warm arms and kissing his face until he smiled, shy and quiet child that he was. 

When he was a not-so-little-anymore boy, she would sit beside him on the bench and watch the petals fall from the apricot trees in the courtyard, and he would recite back to her what he thought the most important thing he’d been taught that day was. 

And she would smile at him so fondly, that expression of pride that tasted like grains of sugar in his mouth every time he remembered it. And she would kiss his forehead and clasp him to her, and he knew she was proud of him. But he still did not hear tales of fantasy- not from her. Never from her.

His mother was not someone who lied to children. 

And so it was never promised that she would stay forever, because she knew better than to break her boy’s heart like that.

His father and his mother were never meant to stay by his side and fold him up in loving, strong arms every day when the setting sun bled lavender across the clouds above. 

And they left, they did- trunks and trunks of belongings and a few servants and a few other diplomats, and they left him behind with the remains of the kheer the cook had made for his eighteenth birthday and an echo of that broad chest that he could still fall onto when the world beat him down and down again and that wide mouth that kissed his forehead late at night and those elegant hands that tucked him into his beds. 

(But he didn’t have anything to pass along- there was no tangible evidence that they had ever been there, aside from his mother’s silver, coral, and cobalt compact mirror and his father’s first sword, forged in the fires of Anglas when his father was just a boy. There were no stories his mother had made up for him, only common knowledge that she had dramatized for his young mind.)

When he was a young man, no one would talk to him as though he were company; he was the Prince, and he might as well be a hollow shell that held only power and no personality. He lacked for conversation that was not his grandfather, and the Desert King was often too busy even for his beloved grandson. 

(And he always told himself that he knew his grandfather and mother and father loved him, but when the only response to his presence slowly devolved into hurried bowing and curtsying and nodding of heads, he could not help but feel like an extraneous monarch in a kingdom that had already become a democracy, unloved and unwanted and useless.)

When he was twenty-one summers old, two years after his parents had left him to the empty corners and lonely nights of the palace, Damian heard his first fairytale. 

And he could not help it- the moment he heard those quiet, lilting tones speaking the words of a fantastical journey to him, he was hooked. 

-

_**Silver Fish Dreams** _

Sometimes he lays awake at night and the stories fill his brain like water in the bottom of a leaky canoe. They pool around his feet, fish that mouth at the bare toes and their scales flash in the darkness of his room, glinting like sunshine on little bits of mica in the water. And he scoops the minnows up, the mind-dream-wish-hopes, lets them swirl in the palm of his hand, a tiny pool of silvered thought. 

He wonders what Damian would do if he handed him those things, those unfinished, half formed fairytales that net themselves and crawl up his legs and his brain stem late at night.

Sometimes, though, now, he lies in his silks and he muffles his sounds in the pillow and curls his arms around himself and wants things that only the stars would be witness to, wants to sprawl himself out on Damian’s chest and knot his fingers in red cloth and sleep with his cheek pressed to that smooth sternum. 

He wonders what Damian would do if he went and did that. 

He wonders what the moon would think of him if he crawled onto Damian’s bed and pressed his mouth so gentle to the curve of Damian’s jaw that he did not awake and just stroked his fingers through the jet silk strands on the top of the prince’s head and soothed his troubled dreams. 

And Timotheé only wonders, because-

he does not dare to dream a dream so high. 

__


	7. Nine Months & Pockets Full of Posies (We All Fall Down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been nine months since Timotheé arrived at the palace of the Desert King.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh. Important note before you read this; non-consensual things happen, Ra’s appears to be a huge douche, and this chapter is pretty rude. 
> 
> Just. Uh. I would ask that you, while reading this, try not to think in terms of black and white, or good and evil. There are wrong things that are done, but don’t make up your mind about them being done for wrong reasons. There is no set moral grey and the shades and tints of morality cannot be examined in the moment because there cannot be any true objectivity when your emotions are being manipulated by your perception of the right and wrong. 
> 
> So. Yes. Thank you.

It has been nine months since Timotheé arrived at the palace.

To him it seems like a lifetime; the painful drag of healing, pulling himself up off the ground and falling on people he barely knew. Learning the sweetness of Dité’s arms where they curl around him, catch him when he is listing to the side, trying to stand on his weakened leg. Knowing the blustery protection that Jason gives so willingly, the way he pretends that he doesn’t care with his drawling quips and rough laughter but then turns around to shore you up while you’re not looking.

To him it has been a whole new lifetime, struggling upwards towards that goal of being able to prove himself to the Prince so that he will not be cast out upon the sands and left for the man of two colors to slay (so that he will not bleed out on the palace steps before he’s even managed to fly free for two seconds.) And here it stands, that on nine months to the day, he awakes in a very similar place as the one he first woke in.

The canopy above him is heavy material that just blocks out the rays of sun he can see trickling through the barely-cracked corner of the bed; he swelters under sheets that are piled with blankets stuffed with goose down, and he shoves them off with wobbly arms, closing his eyes once more and breathing deep of the cool morning air.

And then the arm around his waist (not a pillow, not a sheet, not a blanket, oh-) moves. There is a faint hint of purple haze left in his mind that wants him to curl closer to the warm body beside him, but it’s shattered in the bleary, sleepy gaze of the Desert Prince in all his morning glory.

“You are well,” Damian murmurs, sleep-rough and only half-conscious. His thumb rubs across Timotheé’s cheekbone, the silent gasp of Timotheé’s sucked-in breath wisping across it as it drags down gently to cup his jaw.

“I am well,” he manages, fingers curling in the bedclothes. Damian’s hip is hot against his and he realizes just how bare he is, his cheeks flushing cerise in the shadows of the bed. They are in their own cocoon, caught up here in this space that smells like Damian; like tea tree oil and cinnamon, like spice and musk and man-sweat, like sweetness that’s dark enough to drown. The Prince’s head drops from where it had raised up to meet his eyes, and his cheek presses against the cool, pale skin of Timotheé’s collarbone, breath sweeping hot across the milk expanse.

“It would not have gone, to lose you,” he says, so soft and low as to be almost silent. The knots are curling in Timotheé’s stomach again, but this time- it is not blamable on the sickness of the powders that the Desert King had given him. He tries not to shift his hips, the restless tension building, and his gasp is sharp through the gloom when a broad hand presses to his iliac crest and traces the pale scar of Slade’s sword. “It would not have gone, for you to be lost to me,” Damian murmurs, and- his lips press soft and hot to the base of Timotheé’s throat, sending shiver-shocks through his spine. “It would not have gone, for you to leave me,  _habibi_.”

His breath sours in his lungs, the calm broken by his panic; for what to say? What to do? How to respond, when you are so afraid; when the object of your fear is still within the confines of your dwelling, and at the same time you are thrust into the territory of love you cannot contemplate?

The Desert Prince’s fingers curl across his hip and the younger man sighs, kissing him once more, as footsteps enter the chamber outside their soft and treasured space, and when the curtains pull back with Selina’s hand curled in the drawing-rope, Damian has rolled over to the other side of the mattress and affected the manner of the sleeping.

And Timotheé leaves the chamber with Selina’s quiet help, her hand gentle on his elbow. (And he dares not to look behind him at the eyes of the prince on the bed. For he fears what they show; for he fears what they know; for he fears what they might not hold at all.)

—

She evaluates him in the infirmary, bearing upon him to drink down the tonic of rose water and slip-magic that will flush the last of the toxins from his body. And when he has drunk it and she has pronounced herself satisfied with the way that he’s functioning, she takes his cheeks in her hands and kisses his forehead, gentle and kind.

(And he dares not to cry for that touch, the one his mother never gave him-)

“He has ruined you,” she tells him, her smile the open buds of a camellia, curling outwards across her beautiful face. “He has ruined you with his love.”

“He does not love me,” he tells her, but they both know that it is not true.

It may or may not be be the all-consuming love, the following love, and it could or could not be the way the moon loves the seas, but it is a love nonetheless, no matter what type of love it is. For all that they do not know what kind of love the Prince holds in his chest for his storyteller, it is clear that the love has taken him and dashed his rationality out on the stones.

For he angers at those who have hurt his storyteller, and it is telling in a way that no one can ignore.

Selina lets him stand from her evaluation table, and she wraps a shawl around his pale shoulders before she lets him out into the morning sun. His toes curl on the doorstep as she speaks once more; and he is glad she does not expect a response, for what she says makes his chest ache deeply.

“You were more beautiful than ever when we saw you through his eyes last night, Timotheé,” she murmurs, her hands crinkling the parchment of the tonic recipe. “But you were  _most_  beautiful when he took you in his arms.”

He clutches the shawl tight over his sternum and he leaves, for what else has he to say to that? The palace must know, by now; the storyteller from the northern lands, the slave-boy who was found bleeding on the dunes, has shot his arrow through the Desert Prince’s heart.

And all at once he feels the most unsafe he has been in months and the safest he thinks he will ever feel.

To his surprise, it is not Dité who first clasps him tightly when he enters the common room of the harem quarters. His fingers scrabble across the green silk of Jason’s shirt and he gasps for air at the larger man’s strident embrace, arms locked around his fragile ribs and holding him tightly so that Jason can press his face against Timotheé’s raven hair. Dité’s fingers twine around his and the other man leans against Jason’s back, smiling down at Timotheé like a sun.

“We should have escorted you back,” Jason says, voice rough like the gravel in the gardens. “We should have protected you, little bird-”

But it isn’t his fault and it never will be, and he presses his fingers gently to Jason’s lips, smiling up at him.

It isn’t quite enough to calm them, his (brothers) comrades, but it is enough that Jason can wrap a blanket around him and Timotheé spends the afternoon time laid across their laps with his hair being stroked gently by Dité’s dexterous fingers.

And then the clanking of the guards that come into the room shatter all that hard-earned calm apart.

\--

He knows, in his heart of hearts, that the earth is not truly shaking itself apart.

He knows, in his innermost brain, that he is not bleeding out on the stones beneath his feet.

He knows, in his bones, that his heart shall not cease beating here, in this cavernous room; here, where he stands, where he stands tall and outwardly proud in front of the Desert King’s throne.

But he does not know, nowhere does he know, oh he does not know if anyone will  _save_  him from these men who watch him like wolves, these two men who smile like sharks and swish their feline tails in the shadows behind them, gold edging their skeletons and malicious intent boiling in their eyes.

And still, his spine is a straight and tall column and his gaze is ice and he can feel his mother’s eyes on him for the briefest of moments. He feels the weight of a silver girdle on his hips and the cold sapphire necklace he was gifted for his thirteenth summer, he clenches his hands in his scarves like they’re brocade tunic sashes and bats not a single eyelash at the Desert King nor the knight beside him.

“You have summoned me, your highness?” Timotheé says, soft and sweet like he’s not shaking in his stomach, like he’s not gritting his teeth in fear, like he does not feel his fingers going cold. And the Desert King smiles even wider, standing from the throne and stepping forward, stepping forward until he can curl a strong and weathered hand around Timotheé’s jaw.

It is not gentle; it will bruise. (And his brothers will rage.)

“I summoned you,” Ra’s says, his voice a strong rasp, that current of power underneath, that tone of a man who knows that he holds all the strings. (And how Timotheé longs to slap him, to hit that smug face and jolt those green eyes in their sockets. He wants to jerk away and he wants to cry out in pain and he wants the prince to be there with his sword again.)

The weight of Slade’s gaze is strong upon his shoulders, but Ra’s will not let him look at the other man; he commands Timotheé’s full attention as he strokes up his pale jawline and presses a cold thumb in the hollow behind his ear.

“How are you feeling this morning, Timotheé?” Ra’s murmurs, his breath fanning across Timotheé’s cheeks, cold citrus and wild things.

(His skin crawls and his stomach drops and his heart feels like it’ll beat right out his copper chest-)

“I am well,” he says, instead. Those fingers trace a little line across his forehead and he feels as though winter has crept into his veins when he recognizes the pattern that’s been drawn upon his moon-pale skin.

“I am pleased,” Ra’s says, dragging his voice across Timotheé’s jugular like a thin knife. “It’s often that those of Bristollen are too fragile to withstand the deep and heavy effects of the desert powders.” His smile cuts and Timotheé bleeds on desert stones, red sand spilling from his arteries. “Is it not, forgotten prince?”

And he knows, deeply and shamefully, that he cannot control the shock that spreads across his face, dark storms clouds covering a lonely moon. He knows, for he can see the pleasure and the sadistic thrill in the Desert King’s eyes as he presses his thumb so tightly to the joint of Timotheé’s jaw that his mouth cannot help but open and a small whimper escapes his throat at the ache. That winter breath sends shivers through his iceberg eyes when it presses cold fingers to his lips.

“You were once so high, weren’t you?” The Desert King mocks him, fingernails digging in. “A lonely, useless boy, sitting on top of the world in your northern wasteland. I had known your eyes, false prince, when you were brought to my doorstop, but I had not know your name. And the man of two colors, the honorable knight, was kind enough to enlighten me.” His teeth glint before Timotheé feels the weakness starting in his spine.

“I know of the Drakes, Timotheé-of-the-snow. Your mother was a frigid queen and your father was a foolish man with a heart too soft to truly rule Bristollen. I know of the way they left their heir alone in their castle because they thought him too useless to mold into a successor. I know what the northern countries have said, that the heir of Bristollen was as cold as ice and as fragile as leaves frozen in the night. They said a boy like that, a pretty little empty boy like that, would be just as easy to  _snap_ ,” Ra’s’ fingers tightened, and on the last word he shoved, his age deceptive of his strength, crumpling Timotheé down on the stones. He caught himself barely, his wrists burning with the impact, and his head ached as his vision shook from the impact of his head.

“And you looked for sanctuary here, after the Knight of Schatten crumbled your parents’ empire, didn’t you? You looked to hide here, to hide yourself from his sword and his hands.” The Desert King leered, his eyes flashing lime and fire. “Oh, he  _told_  me, Timotheé. He told me how he  _ruined_  the little ice prince.”

“No,” Timotheé whispered, rasped out, his throat aching from Ra’s fingers and his jaw tingling painfully.

“Yes,” Ra’s said, his fingers dragging across Timotheé’s cheekbone deceptively gently before he gripped his collar and dragged him to his feet. Hands clutched at a slim, shaking waist, and ivory teeth made a cold, pale mouth bleed. He could taste copper and his vision spun, his knees weak and his fingers limp as he pushed at the Desert King.

“This is all you are good for, fallen prince,” he told Timotheé, voice full and shaking with mockery. “The reluctant whore of those who are your betters, a body useless for anything but our pleasure.” His hand cradled the nape of Timotheé’s neck, bending his head back so that Ra’s could take his mouth again with violence and fury, with all the force of the desert sandstorms, and Timotheé could not resist it.

It was like the first time; it was like the first seven times; it was like the growling pleasure of Schatten’s knight when he pressed the little prince into the stones and took him, wet with his father’s blood and coppery with his mother’s, crying into the cold stones when his hips felt like they would shatter with every cruel thrust. 

It was another knife in the tatters of his ruined dignity.

And he cried, tears slipping from his eyes and his chest heaving with sobs when Ra’s’ hands ripped the scarves from his hips and left bruises on the delicate skin, the fox-leer pressing him down into the stones when the Desert King stepped away and let him crumple down into a pile of empty bones. His laughter rang out through the chamber, a chapel of Timotheé’s desecration with that ruthless mirth the ever-ringing bells.

“There will always be men like me, Timotheé,” Ra’s told him, brushing the dark hair back from his drawn face and wiping away the tears with such false gentility before he stood back and rested his clasped hands against his thigh.

“There will always be men like me who wish to take, to break and dash and tear at pretty things like you. You tempt us with your porcelain features and your body and we cannot help but want to shatter you into a million pieces that no one else will want you, so that we are the only ones who will ever possess you.” His smile sharpened once more as Timotheé shook, gathering his shawl around his shoulders and trying to get up, pressing his aching wrists back and pushing up as he stumbled and stood, unable to walk away just yet.

“You are the reason why we cannot have nice things, fragile Philomel.” His hands cupped Timotheé’s shoulders and he pressed a single cruel kiss so gently to the salt and wet of each milk-and-rose gold cheek before he let his eyes gentle deceptively. “I will call Damian to retrieve his pretty, broken thing, so you must not move from here, Timotheé, or else I fear he shall not be able to find you. Do  _try_  to do your job and let him fuck you like the useless toy you are, hmm?”

His breath was too loud in his ears as the Desert King left, his voice fading away as he walked, instructing the guards to summon the Desert Prince to collect Timotheé.

And he found he could not stand any longer, not when the voice faded away completely and Slade’s gaze was still such a weight upon his sternum. Metal clinks when the knight walks before him, when his gauntlet fingers slide through Timotheé’s hair. When those fingers slide downwards and Slade kneels before him and presses his cruel palm to Timotheé’s groin.

Slade had watched; oh, he had. And he had enjoyed it, the way Ra’s broke Timotheé apart, stomping on the glued-together pieces of his pride.

For it reminded him of the way that he had been given Dité, year after year, to break and take apart like this; it reminded the man of two colors of the way he’d bent the slave over the hard stone of the bed’s footboard and fucked him until he cried, wetting the bed with his tears and his come. He had scarred that tan back, cutting it with silver knives and sucking the blood from the cuts, his cock hard with the way Dité tried to muffle his pain in the sheets. He watched the boy grow into a man, still so breakable and still so easy to bend in half and fuck bloody.

It was hard not to see that now, not to remember that, with the blood coursing from Timotheé’s split-open lip down his chin and his fingers shaking so hard against his ribcage. Just another beautiful boy, black hair and blue eyes and an empty sadness that made is so easy for Slade to imagine once again ripping the clothes from his fragile little body and filling that emptiness with his come.

His laugh makes Timotheé feel sick, bile rising in his throat, and Slade presses harm once more against Timotheé’s groin before he stands, dragging his fingers up and down to tap his fingers once at the base of Timotheé’s skull as he walks towards the door.

“You are a prince no more,” he says, over his armored shoulder, and then he leaves the broken boy alone on the cold, hard stones of the Desert King’s throne room.


	8. The Departure (Journey On, Lost Lovers.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time for the Desert Prince and his storyteller to find themselves somewhere outside the palace walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song, is, of course, not mine- I got it off the Spring Awakening soundtrack.

The fury of the Desert Prince shakes the entire castle when he finds his storyteller sprawled on the floor of his grandfather’s throne room. His sword shakes, metal ringing through the chamber, and Timotheé’s hand cannot still his rage when he reaches, weakly, for his prince.

Blood spills when Damian’s wild gestures reach a crescendo and his voice thunders, and Timotheé cries out in pain, his shoulder sporting a thin slice that gushes blood in the way of surface wounds from where Damian’s sword has nicked him.

And all at once, the firestorm calms.

But the line has already been trespassed upon.

 _What are you,_  the Desert Prince wonders, when he watches Selina stitch up the cut on Timotheé’s mangled lip. 

_What are you that you are so precious my own grandfather would betray me so, just to break you?_

_What are you, gentle boy, wrapped in crimson silk and shyness?_

_What are you, broken dignity, a moth that had danced too close to flame?_

_What are you, sapphire eyes and hollow cheeks that hide your shattered soul?_

In his chambers, the silence suffocates, Timotheé’s hands still shaking in pain. Damian cannot decide if he should bring his rage to the throne of Arabâya or if he should comfort his storyteller- he cannot decide if that would even help, but he is too selfish to call Dité and Jason to do his dirty work and he is too weary to try and play the games of his grandfather’s design here in the darkened night.

A trembling hand smooths over the cushions, the ones that he normally sprawls across, and Timotheé swallows down a draught of alcohol from the bottle on the table, setting the glass down with a resounding clink and turning dark eyes towards him.

“I have neglected your stories, highest,” Timotheé beckons to him, his lips shaking like the quaking aspen leaves that shudder in the winds. Damian’s chest feels heavy, like his ribs are clamping down on his lungs, but he goes- he sits beside Timotheé, careful not to touch. Fragile fingers smooth across his furrowed brow and Timotheé sighs. “I am not worth such concern, sun-prince,” he whispers, a breeze. “But that is not what I called to you for. Forgive me my self-pity. It is a story I owe you, not the burden of my thoughts.”

Damian cannot find the words to stall him before his mouth is opening again, the dried rose petals that let forth a trembling song, high and sweet and heartbreaking; a story for his ears that does not come from spoken word, but rather notes and lyrics that flutter towards him from Timotheé’s sugared tongue.

_There once was a pirate_   
_Who put out to sea_   
_His mates all around him,_   
_No maiden on his knee_   
_Oh, sail for a little_   
_A little, a little_   
_Oh sail, for a little_   
_Until she finds him_   
_There once was a maiden_   
_Who wandered the mead_   
_To gather blue violets_   
_Her mama would need_   
_A wail through the willows_   
_All hollow through the willows_   
_She’ll wail through the willows_   
_Until she finds him_   
_The sea was so violent_   
_The crew went below_   
_They begged him to join them_   
_But he would not go_   
_He’ll sail for a little_   
_A little, a little_   
_Oh, sail for a little_   
_Until she finds him_   
_Her heart was so laden_   
_She fell by a tree_   
_Sang of some pi-_

The glass bottle shattered against the wall, alcohol dripping down, dangerously close to the flames of the fire, and Timotheé started, his throat closing with fear as he scrambled back from Damian.

“I will not watch you pretend to be well, Timotheé,” Damian shoved himself up and turned, grabbing his own forearm and closing his eyes.

“I am not pretending,” he said, voice low and choked. “This is how I have been for the past nine months. This is how I always have been.”

“Have you been this unhappy all these moons?” Damian demanded, spinning about, his eyes hot and angry where they rested on Timotheé’s drawn face.

“It is no fault of mine that you have not realized that the feelings of others exist beyond yourself,” he said, and he stood as well, turning his back on the sun-prince.

“You are leaving. We are leaving,” angry voice, laden with a swelling, choking emotion, and he could not help the sob that escaped his chest when Damian’s hands caught his shoulders and a warm body pressed against his. “I would not have you lost to me simply because my grandfather cannot help his meddling self. I would not have you so devastated, wearing the shell of someone beautiful and keeping your sadness silent. I would not have another heart lost to me by a sickness I cannot prevent.”

Timotheé could hear it, that shadow-love in his voice, and it made him want to slash at his skin with the shards of the broken bottle.

_I lost Colin, and for what? For to find you, Timotheé, you who reminds me of him, you who have stolen me with your stories and your wit, with your quiet strength and your defiance._

“It’s high time that I visit my mother and father where they currently reside, in my father’s home city in the Anglas land.” His breath fans across the nape of Timotheé’s neck and his mouth presses, so faintly, to the skin before he turns away. “You will pack, and on the dawning of tomorrow, we will leave.”

Timotheé cries again when the sun-prince leaves, but the sun still dawns, despite his fiercest wishing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, we’ve reached it; the end of part one of 100 Nights. Timotheé has been in Arabâya for 9 months now, and it is time for the story to grow beyond the palace walls. 
> 
> This is not the end of the story, but it is an appropriate beginning and ending point; if this were published in book form, here is where Part One would end and Part Two would begin. Damian and Timotheé have so much more growing to do and so much more discovery of themselves and each other (and some more falling in love to do, I think), and they can’t do it where they are right now; thus, we are moving on. 
> 
> That said; I hope you're enjoying it all so far.


	9. Along the Docks of Ellada

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Ellada, they are finally alone- away from the politics of Arabâya; away from Schatten diplomats; away from the man of two colors and the Desert King. 
> 
> In Ellada, they find their hearts.

The ocean is a murmur that he cannot ignore, waves splashing across the wooden posts of the docks where he sits, his feet dangling over the blue tourmaline below. The linen is cool on his skin and he stares with sightless eyes at the rose gold spreading over the horizon, dipping into deep amaranth- this is just a stop on their journey, just a few weeks here in the balmy air of this seaside town of the Elladan country, but it feels so like the ocean of his childhood that he cannot bear it.

He has sat on these wooden slats before, his chaperone on a small boat, flirting with the boatman as he rows her lazily about in the slowly rocking waves. He has seen these sunsets, the way that they spread so sweetly, diffuse in the clear air of the wide, warm sea. It borders Bristollen- he knows it. The water here stretches up to and past his homeland.

For a moment, Timotheé entertains the idea that if he slips his feet into the water it will suck him in and bear him on seafoam to the shores of his home.

The journey here, to this country not all that unlike the seashore of his lands, was an easy one- it is deceptively simple for Damian to declare a diplomatic journey, for him to bid servants to pack them up, for Damian to bear them away from the Desert King’s palace and the man of two colors. It is too easy for the man of two colors to smirk behind him on the steps as he is helped up into the carriage of the vehicle by strong hands, long hands, hands that know not their effect.

It is too easy to have yet another home ripped from his hands, and he cannot bear to weep for the loss of the companionship of his fellows, for such short, sweet time- barely longer than the time it takes for a child to grow in the womb. If he lets himself feel the sadness, he will lose every shred of remaining strength left, keeping himself tightly bound together in the aching hollowness of his chest, full of intangible feelings and a sadness so deep that he could drown forever in its fathomless depths.

There are silver fish swimming in the clear water below him and he thinks, briefly, of all the dreams and stories he has yet to share with Damian. For once, not all that long ago, the Desert Prince had asked him for all of himself- let his mouth breathe those words that would unmake him, give the Desert Prince all of him, and let himself be swept away.

Forsake himself to the waters of chance and let those stories go forth that would surround him like a current, taking him far from shore on ships borne from the truth of Timotheé’s very self. Damian had asked for his life story, for what lead him to the lands of Arabâya all those nine moons ago, and Timotheé had refused.

It is becoming more and more clear that perhaps he will, one of these nights, before they reach the high halls of Anglas, have to speak out and weave those tales before Damian’s calculating eyes.

For surely Bruce, the man that Timotheé’s parents had known for much of their life, would know the son. The son of Bristollen, the only son: the only heir, the only Prince, the only one that Janet and Jack had ever brought into the world. For surely Bruce would know the face of the lost Prince- the lost King, now. For surely Bruce wouldn’t let this charade continue- Timotheé, lying to his only son, lying to his lovers, lying to his family and lying to the world.

It feels as though perhaps his time is finally running out. Somehow he has managed to continue on like this for almost a year. Almost a year since the blood splashed his face and he drank his own tears on the floor while Slade violated his shivering body. Almost a year since the throne was left empty and he fled the man of two colors, spattering his sadness on the ground and shaking it off in order to flee. It seemed, for a time, that he had found safe harbor in the red dunes. It seemed, for a time, that he might survive in this new life. Bruce and Talia were gone, no sign of their return, and perhaps he could simply stay, perhaps he could simply hide in these shadows and perhaps, perhaps- perhaps he could simply live.

He did not have wild aspirations of reclaiming his throne- no, those in Schatten’s highest courts who had ordered Slade’s arrival and purchased his services would surely plot again. He did not have wild aspirations of even a free life, for what had he to offer other than his body? What had he to offer, other than his mind? What had he to offer that would not strip him down to the barest bones of a human being, lying on the stones and letting the world take from him and never give back?

Timotheé simply wanted to remain alive. And that much would be hard to do if he was accused of being a traitor, if he was accused of espionage, if he was sent back to Bristollen, where surely he would be killed by the new monarch so that he could not ascend the throne.

He knows what will happen, when Bruce reveals his treachery and his lies, his past and his place. He knows the look on his Prince’s face, and he knows the hand that will damn him like he knows his own. These past nine months have not been enough to overcome a lifetime of paranoia and privilege. Damian’s eyes on his and his stories, his mouth on his brow and his hand in the fevered-night, his knife at Slade’s throat and his gentle arms in the bed after the gala- they aren’t enough to save Timotheé when he is discovered.  
Timothée knows that he is worth, and it won’t be enough to satisfy the debt of the deception he has perpetrated.

It hangs heavy in his heart when he finally stands from the edge of the dock and begins walking towards the house on bared feet, and he struggles to strike the emotions from his face. He cannot alert Damian of it now- he still has these next few weeks to treasure, to hold close to his chest before it all falls apart.

The storyteller must tell his stories as he is bade.

—

The fire crackles and spits embers, turquoise tiles surrounding it in a ring that spirals outwards, concentric emblems and swirls of small glass fragments, covered in smooth something that feels slick and cool on Timotheé’s toes in this warm, sultry night. Damian has brought out wine and told him to imbibe, and- well. He cannot help it. His nerves and Damian’s need calming, and Damian hasn’t really spoken to him since they left the palace. They’re dancing around each other, back to the days, early on in Timotheé’s stay, when Damian would watch him from the shadows while he sat in the garden and Timotheé would pretend he had not seen him. When Damian was cold and colder, staying aloof, but his eyes still burnt bright with curiosity.

Back to the days when his eyes would rake down Timotheé’s frame and Timotheé couldn’t help but marvel how much warmer, how much more welcome those eyes were than the cold ones he had known. Back to the days when their mutual attraction was ignored entirely.

He would never have wished it so, but this is how it has become, and the alcohol softens his bones just enough that he regrets it. Damian’s eyes are back on him, hotter than the night air. Here in the lavender dusk, in the darkening twilight with the stars above them, he reaches out to Timotheé and grasps his ankle from the cushion where he is sprawled, his thumb rubbing up the delicate bone.

“It is night again,” he says, so soft and low and sweet from the shadows, and Timotheé shivers a little, drops his hand to rest gently over Damian’s. “Will you still tell me stories in the darkness, little bird?”

“If that is what you wish,” he murmurs, stroking gently at the elegant fingers with his own pale ones, closing his eyes briefly before he finds an ember in the fire that he can latch onto .

“Indeed it is,” Damian whispers, closing his own eyes and relaxing into Timotheé’s presence.

It’s so very clear to Timotheé that the Desert Prince is trying- trying hard to regain that sweetness that they had, in the shadows, in the corners of the palace. He is trying so very hard to take back those words he’d offered forth in the cocoon of his bed and bring them forth to Timotheé once more- to make it known that he still wishes for this, for this sweetness between them. And for his troubles, for his struggles, for his clear attempts at bringing them back to the soft and stable place they had been in, Timotheé supposes Damian deserves something in return.

Timotheé will give him what he wants- why not? After all, it is not all that long now that everything Damian wanted will be out in the open anyway. Why not on his own terms: why not in the guise of a gift.

He will take his victory, small though it may be, and hold on to that glowing triumph when all else threatens to drown it.

“I will tell you the story of a boy,” he says, his fingers tightening around Damian’s.

 _The story of a boy whose name was Timotheé Drake_ , he does not say- he will not say, he cannot say.

(His name cannot be that any more.)

“There was a prince, in a far away land, who ruled an empty castle…”

_He was lonely and small, locked away in his cold stone prison, and he spent his days wandering the gardens and wishing for companionship. There were nannies and caretakers and servants, but none of them would talk to him. None of them would talk to the ice prince, and so as the years went by, he grew colder and colder. His hope still grew, though, in the very center of his chest._

_When his parents, the king and queen, would come to visit, would return home from their diplomatic journeys, he always ran to their arms and let them embrace him in their absently loving way, adoring him perfunctorily while they remained preoccupied with their kingdom._

_They never let him want for anything but unconditional love, and for that he loved them in return, though they did not seem to know it._

_Their kingdom was vast and powerful- the little prince spent his days trying to learn so that one day he could rule it as well as his parents did. He took classes with his caretakers and met with diplomats and he was, it seemed, well on his way to becoming the Ice King that the kingdom would need. The nobles fawned over him, adoring his quiet ways and his strong words and the logic that he could form up in his brain in seconds, and his brains which seemed sure to better the kingdom more and more when he was finally on the throne._

_He was planning and his parents were planning too, for they were to relinquish the throne to him when he turned twenty five summers of age, so that they could retire and live in peace in a warmer place, safe in the knowledge that their kingdom was well taken care of._

_But then disaster came to them and everything around them and struck those blue eyes down, shattering the ice and confidence that they had held._

(And his breathing was steady, somehow, and his nerves were twanging, now, now that Damian’s hand was on his ankle and his eyes were locked on Timothée’s face and he- he was telling his story to Damian and Damian did not even know-)

_There was a plot, from a neighboring kingdom, to destroy the kingdom that the Ice Prince’s parents had built up for their son. They sent in their knight, blazing in a fire of deception, and he came into their home believing to them that he was there in peace._

_And so they took him and the halls prepared for banquet: they took him in and they set him in the place of honor, and there, when all the servants had left and they were about to sup, the knight played his true hand._

_He drew his sword with a steady arm and with venom in his eyes he struck the king and the queen down, their blood spilling out on the stones. He struck them down, their heads rolling, and threw the ice prince to the ground, his hands falling in the blood of his parents and staining red, bright red._

_And he stood above him, his fist gripping in his royal clothes, and he_

(violated him)

_spoke with such venom that the prince was paralyzed, and he_

(raped him)

_left him cold and broken on the floor, drowning in the blood of his king and his queen, and told him to run- told him that no matter where he went, the knight would find him._

_The ice prince, Kimokeo,_ (not Timotheé never Timotheé) _ran for his life._

_He ran to the oceans and he ran through the forests and his parents’ blood dripped behind him. And the knight followed the trail until he found the safe harbor where the prince, now simply Kimokeo, had taken refuge. With a great and terrible thrust of his sword, he stopped Kimokeo on his last step before he could reach the safety of the stone walls of the village, and Kimokeo fell, with a swan cry, to the ground, run through on the blade of the laughing knight._

_The knight left him for dead, sneering at his pain, his body growing cold- but the knight did not know that within the stone walls lived the man who would save Kimokeo’s life._

_For inside those walls was a man as bright as the sun, and strong as the wind, as high and mighty as the mountains, and he gathered Kimokeo up and rebuilt his bones until Kimokeo could stand tall again. And they loved, in the summer of their lives, and through fall until they had reached the winter and the leaves of their youth fell from their bones, shriveled and used up._

_But they still loved, and loved until they left the earth, together, hand in hand._

_And the plot that was to take everything from Kimokeo, in the end, gave him everything._

Damian folded himself upwards, his eyes burning in the firelight as he sought out for Timotheé’s chin with his free hand. He could not help it, pushing into the touch and sighing softly, a heave of breath as the story left him and he could feel himself slumping against Damian, his secret laid bare and free from him.

“Another story where the beautiful triumph?” Damian asked him, soft and low, his thumb caressing Timotheé’s cheekbone.

“I don’t think I said anything about either of them being beautiful,” Timotheé returned, looking up at the Desert Prince with the barest hint of mischief in his voice. He could feel the squeezing sweetness in his chest when Damian smiled, smirked, looked at him with dangerous, consuming eyes. “Or have you finally caught on to the lesson that I’ve been trying to teach you, your highness? That it is the love that makes the people beautiful? And in the end, the love is the beautiful thing.”

“ _You_  are a beautiful thing,” Damian murmured, his lips pressing to Timotheé’s temple. His fingers trembled and he shook, clutching for a shirt, a shawl, fabric to hold on to and only finding skin beside him, tan and warm and radiating like the sun.

“Not as beautiful as you would think,” he said, sitting back and trying to force himself to drop his hands from Damian’s chest, trying to-

“And here I thought you told me that it is the love of a person that makes a person beautiful, habibi. Is it not in the eye of the beholder?” Damian said, smooth, shuddering through Timotheé’s bones as his hands crept up to encircle the smaller man’s waist and his lips crashed like the waves of the sea behind them upon the shore of Timothée’s trembling mouth. It was awkward, at first, too much force, but Damian’s lips gentled on his as his hands did as well, slipping beneath his tunic to smooth calloused heat across pale, soft skin and Timotheé’s throat rose full of noises when teeth dragged their way down the side of his jaw.

“Careful, you- you will mark me,” Timotheé stuttered, his fingers curling in Damian’s unruly, windblown hair, and Damian’s laughter shook his body, his hips rolling involuntarily. “I would not want-”

“And if  _I_  want?” Damian pressed his words to Timotheé’s soft, vulnerable throat. He drew back, blue eye serious in the firelight, Damian’s fingers branding his hips where he was sure purple would rise.

“All that you want you may have,” he said, and Damian’s breath caught in his throat.

“I shall not desecrate your trust,” he murmured, stroking across Timotheé’s navel and feeling the shudder in his bones, and the stars kept turning above them even as he pressed his lips back to the sweet skin stretched over Timotheé’s elegant collarbone.

(And the stars kept ever, ever on.)


	10. So As To Be Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian and Timotheé continue on in their travels towards Anglas.

It comes, still, the dawn, the sun spilling over Timotheé and lighting like a slow flush in the cheeks of the sky. It comes to wake him where he lays, in his soft and swinging hammock bed in the wide, yellow-painted room of this house. He stirs with the lax muscles of sleep, blinking blearily at the ceiling, and it only hurts a little that this is the third morning in a row that he has been awoken not by Dité or Jason, by Damian or Selina, but by the sun’s inevitable rising. His neck aches, tender, where Damian had bitten it in the shadows of the night; they had sat there, warmed by fire, and the Desert Prince had kissed him until the lips of both royal and storyteller were numb.

And then he had come to bed, staring out at the vast canvas of phthalo blue, those pinprick stars twinkling down on his restless body. It made him want for more, those hands strong and constant on his hips, but he had not gotten it, blue eyes and desert smile drawing away from him long before that could happen.

Perhaps it is better that way- today, he must rise and don the fetters of an athlete, as Damian is determined to teach him something about self defense (maybe it will come in handy when he runs, his mind says, and he shoves that back in favor of a bath.) There are loose clothes for him, loose clothes that he would prefer not to wear. He slides the pants on, though, cool fabric that billows about his thighs, and leaves his chest bare. Glaring, on his throat, is an indigo mark ringed with byzantium. He touches it with trembling fingers for a minute, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath and letting the tightness drop from the bottom of his stomach.

It is not the time to think of such things.

Damian is waiting for him, impatient, as expected, in the dusty courtyard, fiddling with two long bamboo rods and twirling them lazily in his broad hands, his own billowing pants a crimson wave in the breeze, underneath this balmy sun.

The bamboo rod feels strange in his hands, not particularly heavy, smooth with the suggestion of splinters and knobbles that he cannot help but run the pads of his thumbs over as he slides his feet a little farther apart and waits for Damian to attack.

That is his first mistake, it seems.

Never wait for the prowling tiger. Never wait for the striking snake.

( _Never pause when the knight’s sword slices the hairs on the back of your neck._ )

The bamboo clacks thunder, inches away from his wrist, and he fights with himself as he fights with the prince, swinging with as much grace as he can muster and blocking the jabs with his stick. Some of them get through, and he winces with the smack of the reddening skin and the smooth wood. It’s a dimming and brightening all at once, this feeling, adrenaline as he fights to keep his ground. This is why he should have attacked, forcing Damian back into the defensive, because like this he cannot gain the higher ground.

This is why he should have fought back. ( _This isn’t the first time he’s thought that._ )

Damian’s face shines a little with sweat in the sunlight, and the breeze doesn’t cool him off as much as it highlights the way his skin is stinging in small patches. He hasn’t landed a hit on Damian this whole time, and his wrists ache a little in a well-used way.

“You are not a fighter,” Damian says, his chest rising and falling slowly as he stands there, looking down the bridge of his nose at Timotheé. Timotheé laughs a little, throwing the bamboo to the ground.

“After nearly forty five weeks with me, you are just  _now_  discovering this?” Damian’s slow smile is enough to make Timotheé wary, but his predatory eyes are laughing as he leans his own staff against the wall.

“You are not a  _fighter_ ,” he repeats, wiping a little sweat off his brow and stepping forward, towards Timotheé. “But you  _have_  fight  _in_  you.”

“Ah, yes,” Timotheé said dryly. “Timotheé Dra- I. Um. Timotheé the fighter.”

“Is that what they say?” Damian’s eyebrow rose, and his palm pressed flat against Timotheé’s sternum. He took in a deep breath, lips curling over his teeth and eyes narrowing, and pushed Timotheé back against the wall. “Perhaps you are not suited for long range, story teller. Perhaps you will excel more at the…  _close combat_.”

“And  _that_  is a line if I have ever heard one,” Timotheé’s mouth curved and he looked up at the darkening eyes above him, pupils blowing as the prince took a deep breath.

Fingers curl.

Nails press crescents against the meat of his palm.

Knuckles are pearls on the edge of your bones, joints that poke out bony and strong and slippery.

And knuckles hurt when Timotheé strikes Damian’s solar plexus, fierce look in his eyes and surprise flitting across Damian’s features. His heel is hard on the flat of Damian’s foot and Timotheé crows a little inside.

“I have a fight in me to be sure,” he says, glaring up at that slightly pained and furrowing brow. Damian just stares at him for a moment and then he laughs, heavy and strong and full, his head thrown back and his eyes glittering in the sun. Long fingers wrap around Timotheé’s wrists and Damian leans down, his stubble dragging across Timotheé’s neck, and he laughs like rumbling thunder against his body as he embraces the smaller man.

“I  _like_  fight like yours,” Damian murmurs, soft and warm pressed to the skin behind his ear. He smells like their fighting, sweat and dust and sun and sand and the way a summer-warmed stone feels. The bricks meet his back before he’s even aware of Damian moving them slightly backwards, cool and a little rough and solid against his shoulder blades and the small of his back as he arches forward away from the cold. Little vines snake against the pale bones and he stares. The Desert Prince’s face is so serious as he looks at Timotheé, shaded by the vine-covered wall, and he cannot help but wonder what he’s thinking, but-

Damian will tell him.

“We are not bound, here,” his voice is quiet as the savannah storm before the first crack of lightning down from the viscous clouds. “We are not as they would expect us to be, and we need not stay fettered by such things,  _habibi_.”

“You are a prince,” Timotheé’s hands shook a little on Damian’s biceps.

“You are a storyteller,” Damian countered, his breath sweet against Timotheé’s.

“This will not change.”  _Lies_. Liar,  _liar, **liar**_ -

“You cannot see it,” Damian’s sigh gusts until it bounces back off the wall. His fingers cup gently against Timotheé’s sun and fight reddened cheek, thumb pressing gently-so-gently into the delicate skin below one storming blue eye. “I am not a man of sentiment, mine-own, but this is what I know to be true inside of me, and I will not deny it because my grandfather finds it trivial. I cannot be untrue to myself, habibi, and I shall not be untrue to you either. They will never see you as my equal, but they need not. I do not find myself bothered by their disdain for your low station, or the way you came into my care so many moons ago.”

“You will ruin me, Desert Prince,” Timotheé counters, trembling voice and beating heart drumming up.

“Are you not already ruined?” Damian’s hand, quick like the ducking bill of a sea-bird, drags across the gasping pink scar across his hip. “And do I not already love you nonetheless?”

“And if I cannot- if I am not, I. If you do not.” He bit his own tongue, closing his eyes briefly and shuddering. “This was purported to be a  _battle_ , Damian, not a confession of romantic intent.”

Damian does not tell him that sometimes these two things are one and the same. 

“Everything I  _do_  with you, everything I  _am_  with you, everything I can feel myself  _able_  to  _be_  with you, beloved,” Damian’s lips are soft and dry on Timotheé’s cheek, on the flushed expanse left of his fingers, “all of that is a confession of my romantic intent. You have dashed my tepid aspirations of an arranged marriage for political reasons across the slats of your ribcage and taken me into you without even trying. You have strung up and slain my thoughts of a life only made full by the fight and conquest and the rule of Arabâya, devoid of love and filled up with shallow affections.”

His laugh is half choked and the Desert Prince, the Gathering Fire, the Warrior of the Sun that stood tall in front of the mighty armies of the South that came to conquer from the lands of no king, holds Timotheé tightly to that broad, strong chest. “And I find myself, every day that comes to pass, even as I take our hearts away from the palace of my birth to protect you from the dissembling of Schatten, deeper and deeper mired in you. I find myself wondering if, as each day ends, you are counting them as a triumph or another day without your escape. I find myself wondering if you can feel the way that I hold you tightly with my jealous words, because I cannot bear to lose you as I have lost before.”

His kiss, bussed against the other cheek, feels desperate in a blood-deep way. “I find myself wondering if you love me as well, storyteller, or if I am simply a wall for you to stand behind, for you know that I would do all I could to keep you whole like I have never been able to keep anyone before.”

Gentle, calloused fingertips brush away the slippery salt at the edges of Timotheé’s eyes, and he presses his face to Damian’s throat, fingernails digging into darker skin.

“You are the most  _unfair-_ ” he murmurs, throat closed up on emotions and shame. “How shall I  _live_ with this, Damian, if you are constantly beating me out with your words like that. And  _I_ am the storyteller?” His laugh is the coverlet of the bed, falling gently down on them as he throws it up to hide them underneath it. Damian’s fingers are strong and sure on his back, tracing down his spine to cup his hips firmly.

“You are enough of a fighter for now,” he says, and they just stand there in the shade until the sun runs amber as the afternoon.

When Damian finally releases him, fingers gently trailing across his wrist, the taller man teaches Timotheé the right way to slam the heel of his hand into the place that the knight’s throat bobs and he shows him the way an ankle will snap if you do this, just this, just this way.

There are nights where the sky is so clear that Timotheé can feel the stars shine down on him, illuminating everything in a wash of silvered light. They are firmly in the eye of the storm at the moment, and it feels almost wrong to enjoy it so much, sitting here in the honeyed air, once more beside the fire. He can feel the ink blot on his skin from the prince’s mouth like a throbbing, live wire.

It seems too much to hope that he could have this, here, his fingers tangled up like faded fishing nets in the darker knots of Damian’s.

For now, though- for this moment, when the skies are turning above them in the ever-changing ceiling, stars like candles in the darkened forest, he dares, for a small moment, to give in to that hope. The stones are cold underneath his feet where he settles them, gleaming turquoise under the smooth ivory lines of his toes in the bleached out moonlight. He has not felt the touch of a lover like this before; it’s almost baffling that it should shake him so, as an earthquake rippling through the continents of his stomach. He jitters on the edge of a nervous high wire, his breath coming in shaky through his pressed-rose lips.

It’s funny, almost, because he knows he’s not all that far behind Damian when it comes to this. After all, the prince had told him already that he had only loved one other before Timotheé. But it seems like leaps and bounds to be able to put aside his touch-fear; to be able to let Damian cradle his hand tenderly, when he’s seen those muscles in action as they wrangle men twice Timotheé’s size to the ground with no effort at all. It seems like he’s climbed mountains to be able to be here, next to the Prince, when he’s so far behind in status and experience and, most of all, honesty.

And it seems a lot like letting go to actually reach out, to brush the pad of his thumb across the smooth expanse of Damian’s cheekbone and then trail the faint whorl of it across the line of his jaw until it hits the night-time stubble that’s growing in almost imperceptibly.

There is no story spilling from Timotheé’s lips now.

(Would it be cliche to say that it spills, instead, from his body?)

He feels those lips, hot like desert sands, trail gently over the marks that they had made the night before, and he shivers like he could possibly be so improbably cold. His hips want to move, when wide palms grasp his waist. Timotheé anchors his fingers in Damian’s tunic and tugs a little, and finally he moves far enough away that Timotheé can catch a breath not saturated in the scent of spice and want.

“I do not particularly wish to bare myself to the stars, Damian,” he presses his thumb to Damian’s lower lip and smiles, crescent moon lips underneath flushed cheeks. Damian’s laughter shakes him up inside and a hysterical giggle escapes his mouth when strong arms sweep him up and over a broad shoulder.

“How- how disrespectful,” he manages to say, his breath taken by the bone digging into his stomach- before Damian answers, he’s catapulted down onto a bed that fairly sinks beneath him until he’s mired, looking up at his prince with hooded eyes.

“Why,” Damian smirked, “I do not mean to disrespect you, storyteller-mine. I would not want to dishevel you and your attempts at proper carriage.” He bent, a knee on the bed and a hand on the floor to ceiling bed post, and he dragged his fingernail along the line of Timotheé’s inner thigh through his thin pants. “Allow me to rectify my grievous wrongs, Timotheé.” Timotheé shuddered, his hips twitching involuntarily, and he sucked in a breath, reaching out with one pale hand to grasp the prince’s wrist.

“Dishevel me as you please,” Timotheé rasped. “I think I’d rather like you to, in fact.”

“Would you just?” Damian murmured, his hand pressing Timotheé’s down into the bedspread and his knee nudging up between the smaller man’s spread thighs. His smirk widened at the rasping moan that escaped Timotheé’s throat when his thigh finally pressed up against the bulge in Timotheé’s pants, and he bent almost in half to push a small kiss against Timothée’s navel as he slid the fingers of his free hand under the waistband. He slid his fingers into the prince’s hair, gritting his teeth at the shock of arousal and panting through his nose. Damian laughed a little against his hip, tugging the pants down and off and flinging them into the shadows in the corner of the room, staring down at his bare body with hungry eyes.

It was the wolf’s teeth in his mouth when he grinned like he would devour Timotheé, but these wolves were different; borne from a place of beautiful and terrible emptiness that needed to be filled with the prince’s fire-bright affections instead of springing from the shadows of vengeance fully formed and ready to draw blood.

He begged for more with his body, arching up and wrapping his long, slim thighs around Damian, fingers tugging and pleading for his whole body to be taken up by violet bruises and kiss marks that were red and swollen with the blood the prince’s teeth incited.

“Want me,” he panted, breathing across a slightly scratchy cheek as he took Damian’s bottom lip between his own and sucked hungrily.

“Need me,” the Desert Prince countered, his own pants now gone and his bare skin pressing warm enough against Timotheé to incite more shivers that were all raw nerves and no temperature in cause.

“I already  _do_ ,” he laughed down at Damian from his perch, straddling those dark hips and rocking slowly in the cocoon of the bed, the curtains now drawn and the darkness warm and thick.

“I have surpassed wanting,” Damian’s fingers curled around him and he cried out, slapping his palms flat against Damian’s chest in a desperate attempt to stay upright, his hips jerking. “I have surpassed needing.”

“W-where are you, then,” he murmured, broken words and broken breaths, the tension coiling in the base of his spine and his thighs locked tight to Damian’s body as he tried desperately to thrust forward into that hot, slick, strong grip.

“I have fallen into simply loving,” Damian whispered, and Timotheé arched, dragging his fingernails down sweat-slippery pectorals.

In the morning, they are still there, welted lines that Timotheé is rather (secretly, of course) proud of.


	11. Pracchade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damian and Timotheé arrive in Pracchade.

They leave the docks of Ellada behind one balmy morning, a little drunk on loving and a little drunk on sunshine, and sobering just slightly in the face of the reason for this journey in the first place. The boat rocks them across clear seas, wind on their cheeks and purple on their necks, the indigo of lovers and the red of their mouths.

He almost feels owned, in this moment- his clothes are the crimson and the gold of Damian’s reign, the colors that will flank the palace walls when he takes the throne, and his muscles are well-worn from the night before.

And, though Damian’s hand has long since left the small of his back, he can feel it there like a stone that’s been on the hearth all day.

They’re on their way to Pracchade, to still their journey towards the ivory and cream towers of Anglas for a few more precious nights. Here, Timotheé has been as well. Pracchade is full of pomegranate onion domes, swirled with gold, glinting sunlight off of the mirrored and silvery glass that panels the buildings in the seaside capitol, Hierushe. He was here, though only once, many years ago, and he can still remember the way the sea salt tasted against the sticky spiced caramels he’d been given, growing soft and warm in his small hand as he grinned like lemons in the summer.

It feels like swallowing to watch Damian at the helm of the boat, the weight of the bruises and the heaviness of his hands- he wants to reach out and touch Damian’s bared shoulder, but he just can’t move his fingers towards the curve of the scapula beneath the skin. His throat is thick with words that will not leave his throat, but his chest is light, and he can fairly hear the frothing sound of laughter bubbling up hysterically in his esophagus over the smack of the waves on the hull. It’s a pink thing, sugar candy in the pot before it’s hardened, camellias opening to the sunshine from the tightly furled buds of Timotheé’s lungs.

It’s suspiciously like what he might imagine love to be, this bougainvillea constricting around his heart and blooming from his blood, and Timotheé feels absolutely conflicted about it.

The nights on the boat come too soon, water filling up his ears for miles around and Damian lounging on sun bleached taupe hammocks strung across the varnished deck. The first night, he returns to his shyness, but they are alone, here- they are alone. They are alone where no ear might hear the way Damian’s mouth leaves Timotheé’s with a soft, wet, full sound. They are alone where no eyes might see the arc of Timotheé’s back when his choked, surprised noises fight to echo off the dome of the night sky high above.

It does not recede, his shyness, but the Desert Prince clearly doesn’t mind.

Things begin to wither and curl up in his chest when the shore is spotted, wood shavings in the fire, burning and charcoal black at the edges. He clings to his scarves and he clings to the shreds of propriety, and the boat docks gently with a flinging of rope and Damian hopping out to knot it around the post, glaring at the dockhands who look at Timotheé like a bowl of sweet summer cherries, ripe red fruit and fruit-stone to suck on, to savor for hours.

Here in Pracchade Timotheé is, once again, a harem slave, no matter what Damian might call him behind closed doors and in the warm solitude of the upper deck, waves slapping against the bow.

It’s like the worst kind of coming home, and it brings distance that Timotheé can only be selfishly happy for, when Damian leads him imperiously into the hotel they’re staying in and holds his head snobbishly high while he demands bellhops to come and take their luggage away. His luggage. The Prince’s luggage.

Slaves don’t have luggage.

Their view is magnificent, the wonders of Pracchade’s brilliant architecture laid out below them, their room lush and soft and absolutely the best there could be. It’s obscene, the way the sheets feel when Timotheé drags his fingers across them as he passes the huge bed to make his way to the bathroom. He feels salted from the sea air, his muscles aching from the sparring Damian had insisted they continue, and he wants the advantage of running, hot water more than anything in the world right now.

So he leaves Damian to sulk by the windows, to look over out on the darkening tableau of lights that slowly flicker into being, the onion domes reflecting them as though they were candles in luminaries spread across the city. Heirushe is a city not easily forgotten, splendor that makes envious enemies out of artists and architects in many foreign lands.   
There won’t be a state dinner, here, for Damian’s visit is not a political one. He’s not even sure how long they will be in Pracchade, only that they will be leaving it behind.

The faucets are burnished a copper color, water rushing from them in great streams, white with little air bubbles, smelling sweet amd damp like a mountain creek. It’s warmer than Timotheé’s had in days, so he sits on the edge of the huge porcelain tub and rests his feet on the slightly textured bottom, letting the water slowly rise and fill the tub. There are perfumes and soaps all along the edge, carefully arranged behind a sliding glass pane in jewel toned glass bottles with silvered stoppers, things that Timotheé would like to smell like, things that don’t smell like kelp and the ocean and days on a boat.

He pulls from them the scent of freesia, the scent of honey, he pours those into the bath, and he watches the water lap up past his ankle, halfway up his shin. It reminds him of the silver fish dreams, swimming through the slowly swirling water, darting in between the trailing clouds of pink honey perfume and lightly golden freesia soap that disperse slowly into the bathtub.

The silver fish dreams are nibbling at his toes again, stories babbling from their scales when he reaches down to scoop them up; they look at him with adoring eyes, small and shiny and precious, and he has to close his own eyes to bite back the tears. For what could have been, would have been? Should have been, cannot ever be?

His prince is in the other room, the other room full of his stresses, and he does not know that he has a prince of his own, and Timotheé doesn’t know if he’ll survive the trip, and the silver fish dreams are tickling his palm with their fins and begging to be heard until he sobs into the water they breathe in.

Forsake him and leave his bones to bleach in the sun- they shall not. Silver fish dreams, the jewelry of the peasant prince, the gems of his imagination and his emotions pour out across them, salt in his bathwater when it finally laps up the side of his thighs and he has to let the silver fish dreams into the water again to reach and turn the faucets off.

(Don’t ever hate me, please.)

Silver fish dreams, swimming their way up the length of his thighs, brushing against his hip bones and the bruises on the small of his back from Damian’s staff in the spar yesterday.

(Don’t ever love me, please.)

It’s warm, the water, and so sweetly scented, pink-orange translucent that makes his body into soft curves beneath the surface, so unlike the angles he’s used to in the plain and unforgiving air. It makes him into someone he’s not, someone more beautiful than Timotheé will ever be, and he holds onto the porcelain side as he watches the silver fish dreams dart around in the peachy bath water, spelling out words of hope and words of kindness and soft touches that he remembers from days gone by.

But then, there- his prince in the doorway, and the silver fish dreams scatter, slipping through the crevices and down the drain even though it’s tightly stoppered. He tries to grasp for them, fingers too slow and clumsy in the water.

“You are bruised, habibi,” Damian says, his voice quiet and strong, his eyes hot with something Timotheé cannot identify. “I have bruised you.”

“I told you you would ruin me,” Timotheé says, light and soft, his fingers clutching once more at the sides of the tub as he tries not to slip beneath the water and hide himself. Damian’s smile, smirk, hungry expression, says that he is not sorry at all.

“I have marked you as my own, Timotheé, that is not ruination,” Damian drawls, moving closer, his fingertips trailing across Timotheé’s damp shoulders when he finally reaches the tub. “It is not such disgrace, to be mine.”

“It is not,” Timotheé murmurs, careful not to turn it into a question, his own hands coming up to grasp Damian’s, and the prince stills behind him, for minutes enough that the silver fish dreams creep out and peek from underneath Timotheé’s thighs.

Hours later, he cannot remember where they slipped off to, when Damian’s clothes were shucked and he joined Timotheé and they accidentally sloshed almost all of the peach sunset water out onto the tiles beside the tub.


	12. I Hold With Those Who Favor Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He strides forward, with fire in his eyes, and he blames her- the blood queen, for this.  
> It is Talia's fault, and Damian will not forget it.

The buildings of Anglas are tall, white, cold- bones built on bones in elegant spirals up towards the heavens, empty cathedrals that are now only historical monuments and houses for the poor after the High King Thomas’ grandfather wrested control of the country from the corrupt High Church and tried to put it back to rights.

There is talk in the streets about that, still; because Bruce, the High King’s son, is still trying to put it back to rights.

At the harbor, when their boat docks, two stately guards and a vehicle, ornate in design and bearing the royal insignia, a bat, and the motto Tantum Iustitiam in a scroll across the bottom wait for them. It seems intrusive to be there, when a man dressed all in formal black, his white hair carefully combed back, steps out of the back seat of the vehicle.

“Pennyworth,” Damian says, his voice oddly thick, his hand twitching and partially raised like he wants to reach out to the man.

“Young Master Damian, how you have grown,” the man says, crisp Anglan accent and not wavering in the slightest. “My dear boy, you’re taller than your father, now.”

“You have not grown in the slightest, Pennyworth,” Damian says, and then he’s stepping forward, walking towards the vehicle, and the man smiles in the thinnest way, composure barely shaken at all by the expression.

“I do not think it will damage your decorum all that much to greet me properly, Damian,” the man says, his voice wavering the slightest bit, and then Damian embraces him like a precious thing, a precious thing he’s afraid to break, and Timotheé knows that this- this is the Royal Advisor Alfred Pennyworth, a man he met years ago at a diplomatic dinner, the interim ruler of Anglas until the High King Bruce returned as per the contract with Arabâya. “And who have you brought with you?” Damian clears his throat, his high cheekbones flushing slightly for a moment as he turns to beckon Timotheé forward.

“He is my storyteller in my company in the palace of the Desert King and I brought him along on the trip for companionship. He is- he is my lover, Alfred.” Damian said, his eyes burning bright, and Timotheé ducked his head- for surely he had not forgotten the face of the Bristol prince.

But Alfred said nothing, simply beckoning them both into the back seat of the vehicle.

“I am glad you have found such companionship, Young Master Damian,” Alfred murmured, settling himself in his own seat beside the driver. “One finds themselves very lonely without someone with whom to share their heart.”

“I had heard of Leslie,” Damian reached out hesitantly to touch the back of Alfred’s shoulder, and Timotheé’s nose prickled with the sting of sadness. “And hoped that my condolences were conveyed properly to you.”

“There was nothing more for her here, Master Damian,” Alfred said, his voice sober and grave, his hand reaching back to gently press against Damian’s for a moment before he straightened his posture again. “And there is nothing that please me more in these lonelier days than having your father and mother back in the castle again. They will be so pleased that you have come to visit them,” Alfred changed the subject tactfully, and Timotheé could see Damian warring with his want to press Alfred for details and staying within the polite lines Alfred had so clearly just drawn.

“Will there be a formal supper tonight?” he asked instead, his hand drawing over Timotheé’s on the leather seat.

“Indeed, it appears your mother wished to welcome you in style befitting her favorite son.” Damian snorted, looking out the window at the streets passing by.

“I should hope I am her favorite son.”

“One would think, considering that you are her only son.” Timotheé stifled his giggle in the end of his scarf, Damian’s mouth quirking at him, and he turned to the window on his side in an attempt to retain his composure. 

He stared at the buildings that sped past, the stones that made them up and the windows that gleamed in the fogged light, polished and shining like a force field between the passerby and the careful displays of each store’s wares.

There were people, so many people, more crowded streets than any in Bristollen, and their dark, intensely colored clothing was a kaleidoscope that almost confused Timotheé’s eyes. It was a foggy day, the kind of cold fog that Anglas was known for, and it muddied up the view of the palace as they drove through the gates and on to the roundabout that led their vehicle to the front door of the bone-white palace.

And in should they go, to this cold hall with its checkered marble floors; and in should they go, to the place where his heart crumbles and falls apart, and he dives from the sky to the sea, the horizons kissing at the point of his impact, and so should he drown.

And so should he drown, in his lies and his falsehoods, in his stories and his love that he has offered forth like some deception; that it truly was not a deception will surely be overlooked. And so should he drown, plunged deep into the sea that is the Anglan High Palace, floundering his way to the door with water in his lungs and blood in his mouth, with tears in his eyes and rust red footsteps trailing the deaths of all those that have loved him all the way up the white marble steps.

And then he sees the High Queen Talia; the Royal Daughter of the Desert, and he feels like he’s going to crumple to the ground and let the blackness of his fear take him down.

“Habibi,” Talia embraces Damian, her smaller frame seeming to envelope his in a swell of motherly affection, the sight of Bruce standing behind her with the smallest of charismatic smiles on his face making Timotheé feel a bit wobbly. “You have brought your concubine with you, I see.”

“I have brought my lover, Mother,” Damian says, starting out somewhat stilted. When he turns to Timotheé, though, his voice is stronger, and Timotheé wants to grasp his arm like a rock in a sea. “This is Timotheé, Mother, Father. Timotheé, these are my parents.”

“Ah,” Talia says, looking quite displeased, though Timotheé can sense no recognition, and the Queen does not even deign to look at him, really. “And why did you not leave the concubine at the palace? Are you so dependent on your human needs that you must inhibit yourself this way? You would have made it here in less than half the time if you had traveled alone, Damian.”

“Talia-” Bruce begins, but Damian holds up a hand.

“You will treat him with the respect he deserves, Mother,” Damian says, slowly but sharply. “Grandfather presumed to meddle with me, and drugged Timotheé without either of our consent, leaving Timotheé in a situation that very nearly cost him his life, and I was quite displeased. I decided to come and visit you so that I could not only introduce you to my lover, but also bring him away from the influence of Grandfather and his ill begotten plans. He is more than a mere concubine, more than a slave, and he has more than all of the worth of a person, and you will give him that or we will leave.”

And all is silent as mother and son lock gazes.

“I must go prepare for dinner,” Talia says eventually, her eyes sliding over and narrowing at Timotheé, and she turns her back on them, her shoes clicking away.

And Bruce smiles at the two of them warmly, his hand reaching out to drag Damian into a hug.

“I’m glad you brought him with you, son,” Timotheé can hear him say lowly to Damian before he turns to Timotheé himself. “It’s quite nice to meet you, Timotheé. I look forward to learning more about you over dinner.”

And his heart doesn’t leave his throat even after they’re locked up in their room dressing for the formal dinner.

Damian’s fingers trail down the length of his bared arms, wrapping around his wrists where the silver and sapphire bracelets link delicately and loop down to attach to the elegant rings on his middle fingers. His nose presses, warm breath puffing from it, to the crook of Timotheé’s neck; his back is hot and solid behind him.

“Mother can be downright difficult,” Damian murmurs, understating it to the point that Timothée wants to laugh hysterically. “But you…”

He turns Timotheé to face him, his fingers wrapping with Timotheé’s for a brief moment before he cups Timotheé’s face.

“You are the wind that shapes across my red sand dunes, ya hayati.” He bent, pressing a gentle kiss to the tip of Timotheé’s nose, and then he stepped back.

 _You are the rain that grew these flowers,_  Timotheé does not say.

 _You are the ocean depths where my silver fish dreams dwell_ , he does not tell Damian.

 _You are the linen that bound my wounds_ , he does not whisper.

You are the love I was always meant to lose.

-

The dinner is set with elegant silverware, china that could only remind Timotheé of Bristollen, with its northern designs and pale, understated colors. The food is tasteless to him, and the company is a mixture of everything he has ever wanted and horribly uncomfortable.

Alfred is pleasant, clearly attempting to soften the harsh edge of Talia; Talia is downright mean, ignoring Timotheé or making snide comments about him all through the first and second and third course. Bruce is friendly, but he is, understandably, caught up in asking Damian about Dité and Jason and Damian’s own daily life.

Damian is, after all, their son.

The marble floors are cold beneath his slippered feet; the food is not satisfying, and his heart pounds harder and faster with every bite that he eats. It catches in his throat, choking him until he can manage to swallow it down, spiced ale burning a trail to his stomach and making him shiver feverishly.

(Don’t vomit.)

He breathes in.

(Don’t faint.)

Bruce asks Damian a question about Jason that even Alfred leans in to hear, and Talia is suddenly looking right at him. He can feel the blood rush in his ears; he can feel his eyes tear up. He can feel his breath stop in his lungs, and his adrenaline hits his blood. He can feel his wrists tremble and his fingers shake.

“I know who you are,” Talia says, her voice low venom, and his fork clatters to his plate, standing quickly and pretending he had not heard her.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Timotheé says, steeling his voice and letting his flush of panic act as a mask of awkwardness. “I need to use the lavatories. Which way are they?”

Bruce kindly points him to the door on the side chamber of the intimate dining room, and tells him that they are down that corridor, and he leaves with barely disguised haste and declines the offer of an attendant to show him the way, smiling disarmingly at Damian’s questioning glance. He shuts the door to the side corridor as quickly as he can, leaning back against it in the dimness of the hall, the light of the lavatories clear at the end of the hallway.

He breathes in; once, twice, three times.

He breathes out.

He bites his knuckle and stifles a sob, and he shakes ever harder when he hears, from within the chamber, the sentence that will undo him entirely.

“I have met your concubine before, Damian,” Talia says, the silence in the dining room deafening.

He thinks his heart is going to stop and he wishes it would, before he has to suffocate under the rubble of his collapsing tower.

“It cannot possibly be, Mother, that you have met my  _lover_  before,” Damian says, setting his fork down audibly. “We found him, bleeding from a nearly fatal wound, on the steps of the palace, and remembering very little about his past. When would you have met him?”

“He is not merely Timothée,” Talia says, false urgency in her tone. “That boy is Timotheé Drake, the heir to the Bristollen Throne- the lost prince, the one that has been missing for almost a year, since the Schatten nobility took over the government of Bristollen and a rogue assassin killed the Summer King and the Winter Queen. He has been taking advantage of you all these months,  _habibi_ , and I fear that he means to take what has been yours through his deception.”

He can feel his palms bleeding where the metal and fingernails cut into them, but he cannot feel the pain.

“You are lying to me- this cannot-” Damian starts, but Alfred’s soft voice interrupts him.

“I know that face, young master Damian. That is indeed the lost prince, though I would not be so sure of his designs on your throne.”

“It cannot be anything else,” Talia announces imperiously. “You must be rid of him, Damian, you cannot be blinded by your lust for the boy. I am not lying to you- that is the heir of Bristollen, and he cannot be trusted. They are saying in the streets that he is the one who helped Schatten take over Bristollen, and what if he betrayed you that way as well? I could not bear it.”

“You are telling me that I must be rid of him?” Damian’s voice sounds incredulous, his palm hitting the table in a loud explosion of noise that Timotheé knows very well. “I must discard my lover?”

“He cannot be allowed to usurp you, Damian.”

Bruce clears his throat after Talia speaks, his own chair creaking slightly as he shifts.

“You would have Damian do that without even speaking with the boy, Talia?” Bruce asks quietly.

( _He’s going to die here, in this palace, at the hands of his own lover, isn’t he?_ )

“I would have Damian not falter in his decision,” Talia snapped, her dress rustling. Timotheé sucked in a silent breath, his heart in his throat, and he braced himself against the stone of the wall as he tried to stand from the pile he had crumpled into on the floor, having slid down the door.”Make a decision, Damian. He is your lover, and you must act now, before he returns.”

“A decision, based on these facts you have presented,” Damian’s voice was measured, now, low and dangerous. “A decision on this treason you have exposed.

“A decision,” Talia repeated.

“If he is as you say he is, Mother, Father, Alfred, and he is not the citizen Timotheé that I had thought… I cannot have him as my lover any longer.”

And Timotheé ran.

-  
“For if he is truly the heir prince, and his throne has been taken from him, he is of a status equal to mine, and he cannot be seen by the countries as being my concubine, my shameful lover, my affair,” Damian’s voice sounded disgusted, and he glared at his mother.

“Timotheé came to use with a wound from the blade of Schatten’s Knight Slade Wylsøne, the same one that tried to rape him during the diplomatic gala this season- the same one that forced us to leave the palace and travel here. If what you say is true, that would corroborate not a plot to kill me and take my throne, but a plot to kill him and make sure his throne was never regained.” He shook his head.

“I do not appreciate your slander, nor your meddling, and I will not let you disrupt my love in this way. Timotheé’s throne has been stolen from him, and as his love and champion, as according to those Arabâyan customs that you earlier found to be so suitable, it is my job to return it to his control.” Bruce cleared his throat, his hand resting over Damian’s.

“Tantum Iustitiam,” he said slowly. “I’m proud of you. Your mother’s taste for violence, for vengeance, and for political espionage has never suited you, and it would not suit you as the ruler of Arabâya.” He looked to his wife for a brief moment, and then he drew his hand back. “Your temperance and your loyalty will serve you well. Go and speak with your love and bring him back to us so that we may do right by him, Damian.”  
Damian stood, his cloth napkin fluttering to the ground, the wings of a half-crippled dove laying on the marble floor, and he strode out of the room, not sparing a single glance back.

“I wanted the best for him,” Talia murmured, her hand coming up to press against her husband’s forearm, and he made a noise of assent.

“You are the blood queen, my love,” he said softly. “And you take more lives than I could ever forgive you for, but still, madly, insanely, unfairly, I love you so. I cannot forgive your flaws but then neither could you ever forgive mine, and so we only learn to live with each other’s flaws and love each other, flaws and all. You have to let him go and make his own decisions in love, and you cannot hire the murder of another simply because you wish for him to have all the best. There are some things even you cannot control, Talia.”

“I cannot approve of his choice,” Talia said, her eyes conflicted and flashing with her anger. “I cannot approve of his choice, beloved.”

“Then it’s a good thing he doesn’t need you to, isn’t it?” Bruce said, kissing the back of her hand, the corner of his mouth quirking up for a moment.

And then the door was flung open, and Damian stood there in all his fury, blazing fury that had filled his veins when he had found his love laid out on the stones by the man of two colors, when he had found that his grandfather had meddled with him- the fury of his own protective instinct, roaring and crackling in his chest.

“Timotheé has fled the castle.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends Part Two!


	13. The Loss of a Little Known Nepenthe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He fears, and he waits; and he fears, and he flees. Whatever illusion they had been holding has been shattered on the ground.

The first time that Ra’s al Ghul knew spring was when he first laid eyes on Melisande- the first time that Talia al Ghul knew the summer was when she looked into the fathomless depths of Bruce Wayne’s gaze on the night of their engagement. The first time Damian al Ghul knew the frost was when he reached out at his side and did not find Timothée there.

It was cruel and it was painful- it was wrong and it hurt. It was a sick reminder of how used to Timothée’s presence he’d gotten, and now the absence made his stomach tighten- it made him think of this, this betrayal. His mother’s attempt at help, toppling governments in a display of maternal affection so large it could only ever have been a Desert Queen’s- making things worse and worse before they could even fully bloom into the better he had seen.

Damian looks out of his window, frosted glass that barely obscures the night sky of Anglas, and he wonders- is this how the Desert King felt? When his love fell to sickness, withering like a vine in the sun- when the spring no longer came to Arabâya, instead passing it by in favor of greener pastures and regimes that did not feed themselves on tears? He has often wondered if perhaps this is why his grandfather is so determined to spite him, to constantly throw things in his direction to derail him.

If, perhaps, he fears that Damian will be struck down in the same way he was, with a blow to the heart and a knife through the throat, with a sword in his back and an ever-spiraling sense of control. He wants Damian to be stronger than he ever was, and for years Damian did not understand this. He was never to fall in love, was he? He was never to be that vine, exposed to frostbite and to sunburn. He was never to fail in the way his grandfather had.

Damian was never to have a queen at his side because Ra’s would not have his grandson make the same mistakes he had, blinded by youth and love.

He remembered the stories Ra’s had once told him, stories that Talia had not even heard of her own mother. The Desert King had brought him to his chambers, one night, one night while Talia and Bruce were on a trip, and Damian had sat there with wide eyes and a clutched the silk of his floor cushion as his grandfather sat with him beside the roaring fire and they drank sweet tea. That rumbling voice, strong like thunder in summer clouds, echoed in the chamber, and Damian soaked it all up so as to never forget it.

She was beautiful, Ra’s had told him. Beautiful like no other. Her eyes were green and they shone with life, fierce and strong and relentless. Her hands were elegant and her mouth was kind, her cheekbones high and her freckles many, strong against her sun-dark skin. But her laugh was what Ra’s had fallen in love with, so many years ago- it was her laugh that had drawn his true attention to the woman behind the beauty.

“It was not what you would think of as a beautiful laugh,” the Desert king had said, his eyes stuck in a time three decades ago. “It was indelicate, it was harsh, it was raucous and loud and unabashed, and it was so full of sincerity that I couldn’t help but want it for my own. They are fake, Damian,” Ra’s murmured, his hand pressing gently to the boy’s round cheek and his mouth curving in the rarest of genuine smiles. “There are so many of them, hollow inside but pretty on the outside, these men and women of the courts and the festivals, but not her. Never her. She was so above it all, so far above even me, and I knew that all I needed was for her laugh to have come from something I did.”

“So I should look for a Queen without niceties?” Damian asked, looking up at him and furrowing his brow.

“You should look to whoever makes you want like that, habibi,” Ra’s’ laughter was almost solemn. “Look to the person who you want to keep with you, keep held so tightly to your chest you cannot breathe, Damian. Look for the person who takes that breath away and makes you know that you would give anything, anything at all, for the chance to keep them by your side forever.” His hand cradled Damian closer to him, folding the small boy into his lap and holding him close, one of the vague displays of affection Damian knew him by. “Or, then again, don’t. Don’t let yourself be wrecked like that. They will only take your heart from your chest and leave you with a pretty cage and no bird to sing within it, Damian.”

He had looked at his grandfather for a long moment before he nodded, and Ra’s smiled once more.

“And now, I believe it is time for you to sleep, little prince. Your mother will have my head and my throne when she realizes how late I have let you run about while she was away.”

That was the only night Damian can remember his grandfather tucking him into his bed, pulling the covers around him and looking down with a haunted face at the little prince’s blue irises that fell ever farther away from him, beneath small eyelids and into the land of the dreams of innocent children.

It makes more sense to him, now, his grandfather’s urgency.

He’s sitting here in his father’s palace, waiting for news of his beloved, the same beloved that has been chased across country and across sea by a man whose sole profession is killing those who run- waiting for news of the man that has broken him just like Ra’s had always warned. News of the man who had become the tempest in the teacup of his chest, that had made his spring into something he can never redact, that had brought him to the edge of where his grandfather has resided ever since the day that Melisande al Ghul left this earthly plane.

He is waiting for news of his Desert Queen and he fears, how he fears, that a sandstorm of epic proportions is coming- he fears that he shall never see those trembling, pale hands again, nor those blue eyes, that he shall never hear another fairy tale from lips of dusted rose, the color of the sky in the desert winter, when the sun is just barely peeking over the red rust dunes.   
That sun might never come.

And while he waits for the wash of dawn, he thinks upon the subject of his mother; of his father, of Jason and of Dité, of these lovers that did not fear the weakness of emotion- for every bitter smile of his grandfather’s there is the quiet laughter of his father and his mother’s eyes alight with happiness, there is the restless jitter in Dité’s leg and the animated motions of Jason’s hands. For every memory of warning, of waiting, or shielding yourself from emotion, there is another of the virtue of letting yourself love.

His mother loves with fierce passion; she is blinded by it, willing to do anything to insure that those she holds most dear will succeed. This whole debacle, Damian knows is just another instance of Talia trying to make sure that he will rule the best he can. His father had thought himself cut off from loving, years ago, when his own parents had died, and it was not until Talia that he knew the joy of sharing life with another. And there is Dité- a version of Talia, who loves brighter than the sun, a version of that same love Talia holds but in the body of a boy who has been wronged and shamed and beaten down too many times, who holds such an aching need for his lovers to be happy that it makes him feel their absence in a physical way. And as his father is, there is Jason; the boy who could not fathom loving someone so much it might cloud your judgement; the boy who lost everything and spent years trying to regain it with a tough attitude and a tougher shell, who struggles every day to remind himself that the miles between Talia and Bruce and Jason and Dité are not abandonment at its most cruel.

(For death would be bearable, to know you cannot do anything; it is the separation and the knowing that across the sea your lovers lie, alive and well, without you, that burns the most.)

He feels like a patchwork quilt, hung up in the window and battered by the winds outside, a mixture roiling over the fire in a sickly hot stew of emotions. The love of a lion, brave of heart and strong of will; the fear of the skeptical, steeped in the reality of the fleeting existence of humans and their love; the wounds of one torn apart for years, growing up and waiting for the day he sits on the crown; the shell of the little prince who refuses to be weakened again by love, who has lost before and cannot lose again.

And the Desert Prince sits there, a tempest struck up in rising waters and twisting emotions. And the Desert Prince waits.  
-  
There is a storm building in the pit of Timotheé’s stomach, the cold winds buffeting him from all sides and his skin is pale against dark stones when he presses himself to the side of the building and tries not to weep with frustration.   
Talia knows who he is; surely she’s known all this time. It has been her, all this time.

The man of two colors, vicious though he is, fights with a purpose; he kills for a contract, and he strikes life down not out of his own volition, but out of his self-serving attempt at business. It had never been Schatten, truly; the animosity Timotheé had felt at the state dinner in Arabâya was misplaced where it had fallen on the diplomats. For as sure as the man of two colors was vicious, was fierce, and was cruel, it was equally as true that the diplomats had not been connected at all to the true reasons for his cruelty.

Slade Wylsøne was not working for higher powers in Schatten. He was  _never_ working for them.

And, ever-ironically, the lost prince of Bristollen, Timotheé Drake, had fled the imagined Schattenian coup to the very place where the plot to dethrone him and his parents had originated. He had slept in the lion’s den all these months; he had fallen in love with the man for whom the entire plot had been constructed. He had given up all hope of ever regaining his kingdom, and he had kept himself safe, only to be thwarted by a twist of fate that he had never seen coming.   
He had looked to the sky for the rain that had torn the petals and buds from his branches, when the true enemy had come from the ground, seeping up his roots until it paralyzed the veins within him, striking him from his very core.

Inexorable rot, soaked through, toppling his trunk and snapping his branches. He can pretend no longer that there is safety on this earth.

He can pretend no longer that the story he had told his prince is true; there is no salvation within the walls that Kimokeo sought, only treachery hidden beneath gilded words and soft touches. Kimokeo; Timotheé; the knife has lodged in his back and he has died, a dead husk of a prince only running to barely survive, to barely keep the beat of his heart for another thumping contraction.

His fingers are bones, caught up in his clothes, and he slumps against the wood of the dock’s office and waits for his ticket to be handed over, the small amount of coins he had left in his pocket from a day out in Pracchade enough to buy him passage to Scendenig. He will leave, once more, perhaps never to see the face of his lover and betrayer again.

(And, oh, he knows that Damian did not betray him- not yet. It’s an easy choice to see, though. As soon as Talia explains what has happened, the Desert Prince will realize how foolish he was to ever think himself in love with a liar like Timotheé, and that is when the betrayal will occur. That is when he knows he will feel the bite of the blade that his beloved had once used to protect him.)

He thinks of Dité, and of Jason; of Selina, and he wishes for them once again, for them beside him. Timothée is lost in reverie, in remembrance of their warmth, their kindness, their- he wants too much, he wants them to never learn of his lies, and he wants their arms around him one last time.

“Sir,” the rough voice of dock master draws his attention, and he looks up, hopes the tears do not show so brightly in his eyes, to see a red-haired woman with brilliantly verdant eyes looking at him from an ornate wheeled chair and a blonde woman dressed all in purple, next to the dock master. “I’m afraid there’s not enough room on the ship for you to have your own room for our overnight voyage, but the Lady Barberre has offered to share quarters with you. You may board with her at this time.” He chokes on his breath, briefly, anxiety crawling up his esophagus, but then he smiles, faint and light, at the Lady Barberre, and she smiles back with eyes sharp as blades, the dock master leaving them to go supervise the boarding of the ferry.

“As you’ve been told,” she says, tilting her head to the side, “I am the Lady Barberre, but… I prefer you call me simply Barberre. Lady is more formal than I wish to be, if I’m to share my quarters with you. This is my assistant, Stephanie.” The blonde woman waved a little, grinned widely, and Timotheé felt his smile grow a little without his consent. “And you?”

He hesitated, fingers fumbling at the hems of his sleeves in panic, and he bit his tongue on the memory of the voice, so many months ago, asking his name for the first time-

(And for me? What do I call you? he’d asked, and that generous, warm smile had rained like sunshine down on his fevered brow.

I think I’d like it if you called me-)

“Robin,” he said softly, shuffling his feet. Barberre’s eyes widened a little and his brow furrowed. “Is that- I mean. Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, reaching out to lay a hand on his own trembling one. “Don’t worry, skittish little bird. It’s only that I once knew a Robin, a long, long time ago. But no matter, the past is not what I choose to dwell upon. Shall we board?” He nodded, that faint smile returning, and Stephanie winked at him as she turned Lady Barberre’s chair towards the ramp up to the deck of the ship. “Lead us on, Stephanie.”

“As you say, Barberrella,” she said, voice chipper, and Timotheé caught the fond quirk of the Lady’s mouth before he ducked his head once more to pass the officers onto the ship. “Onwards and upwards.”  
-  
The ship leaves the harbor as the night falls, and they cleave through the water towards the land of ice and snow, Scedenig, Scedenivian cities waiting and Timotheé watching the ivory towers and amber lights of Anglas leave them behind.

Somewhere, there, is the fury of his love, that he’s leaving behind, and he soaks his sleeve with tears before the dinner bell is rung and Stephanie knocks on the door leading to his little room in their shared quarters.

“Will you come with Lady Barberre and I for dinner, Robin?” she asks, as though she already knows the answer. “And for drinks, here in our small common room, afterwards?”

He lets her confidence lead him and he nods, once, twice. Three times.

“I will,” he says.

He does not look back at Anglas as he leaves the room.

He will not look back any longer.


	14. Interlude: Under the Circus Tent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Lady Barberre was not always chair-bound. Once upon a time, a time long ago, she flew higher than the stars with a boy named Robin in her arms.

A long time ago, long before Barberre was contained in her chair, she was a force of nature that no man knew how to rule. She had ruled her father’s estate in Anglas and she had charmed her mother’s relatives in Bristollen, and then she’d run off to join the circus. It was to the great dismay of the Anglas court when the esteemed Military Commissioner’s daughter Barberre announced that she was using her training in dressage and other equestrian sports to become a performer in Haly’s Circus, balancing and flipping atop a horse under the big top.

But she did it anyway, because Barberre had never been one for listening to the gossip of men, nor the gossip of women. She donned a skintight suit and a carefree grin, and she let her riotously red hair fly wild around her shoulders every night.

A long time ago, long before Barberre was bound to the earth, she flew every night like she could leave it all behind.

The sea sweeps along the sides of the boat in smooth movements, rocking, and- Timotheé can hear the guests on floors below them responding to the ringing of the dinner bell. They’re already seated, here, in a nice table that was reserved for the Lady Barberre, and he resists the urge to cough and turn away from all of the upper class people settling down around them. He’s been months in his role as a slave, and it’s hard to break away from, with Barberre’s stare from across the table so reminiscent of Damian’s.

“You will be joining us for drinks afterwards, Robin,” Lady Barberre tells him, tone steely but, oddly, gentle.

He simply nods.

And he makes it through dinner admirably well, considering his situation; on the run from the love of his life, said love’s mother, father, and probably whole kingdom (multiple kingdoms, actually), and the armies of said kingdoms.

-

The drinks are strong, and Timotheé is patient, and Barberre sits still for a few long minutes before she starts talking.

There was a time, a long time ago, it seems, when Barberre did not have to follow the rules of gravity. The big top was colorful and the lights were bright, and the shadows of the crowd were her adoring fans. And she flew- she flew high and she flew with laughter flowing over her lips and fire flowing down her back, and a boy so bright he nearly rivaled the sun flew above her each night.

He was her Robin, the Robin that sang a song too sweet, the Robin who had no parents; he was her Robin, who made it seem as though there were no rainy days. Her Robin had another name: the name Dité, the name Rikard, son of Gray and orphan-child of the circus.

She would brush her horse’s mane and sit in the stable cars when it rained, stroking the warm flank of her steed and watching the raindrops hit the glass panes of the trailers across the grounds, and he would flip his way down from the rafters,sprint across the trampled dirt and grass, spring up the steps, and fold himself in beside her. He had a laugh that was infectious, a kindness that baffled her, and he was the first boy she’d ever fallen in love with.

He was younger than her, sure, but he was beautiful and he was sunshine and he was everything she thought she would want.

She and Robin swung from the ropes of the big top and flipped from horses every night they performed; they slept close together with hands nearly touching, and shared blankets by the fireside.

The whole circus believed that their little Robin-bird and the beautiful Barberrella would surely end up married. She was the pale and fiery Harvest  Moon, the lunar cycles steady and beautiful, and he the summer sun, passionate and lovely.

And then the thunder struck over Haly’s Circus, and in the span of two months, they lost both their moon and their sun.

A vicious outcast clown performer of the carnival, made more and more bitter by the continuing success of Barberre and her beloved act over the three years she had been with the circus, struck down her career at the most inopportune moment; pushing Barberre from the middle platform, he broke her spine and paralyzed her for life, mere days before the circus was due to leave for a tour around the great empire of Arabâya. Two months later, dear Robin was gone, a tribute reluctantly given to the Royal Daughter Talia al Ghul of Arabâya.

And the circus mourned.

When Haly’s returned to Anglas, Barberre had demanded her father allow her to leave her vast library and wheel her chair down to visit Robin, and the Commissioner had acquiesced, realizing the immense pain that leaving her love behind had brought her. But when she arrived, it was to sad faces and guilt, spread across the big top tent like smears of bright green paint.

“Robin was taken from us,” they told her. “Robin is gone.”

“Robin belongs to the desert, Barberre,” they said, pressing her wet cheeks to their warm shoulders, and she wept long for her lost songbird, buried somewhere deep in the red sands of Arabâya, in the arms of another.

“I knew another Robin,” Barberre says, the ice in her glass clinking together as her hand shakes slightly, the condensation dripping onto the mahogany table and leaving a ring of water behind. She’s looking out the window, green eyes far away, and Timotheé feels- he feels like he’s intruding. He feels like he’s not meant to be here.

For she knew another Robin; a Robin he knows as well, and he can feel the pain of losing him as acutely as he feels the pain of losing Damian. (Is he lost, though? the voice in his head says, and he almost cries as he crushes it into silence.)

“I have a new bird, though,” Barberre says, setting her glass down and smiling slightly, the corner of her mouth tipping up as she turns to the fire. (To the fire, from the cold; from the past, that sea of salty tears they sail as they cleave their way towards Scedenig, to the light of life as of yet unlived, ripe and waiting for them to seize it, its warmth flooding their weary bones.) “The Canary Queen, a noblewoman of Scedenig. That is who I come to be with, Robin, you see- I am traveling to my true home after a short visit with my father. My Canary Queen lives on the cold coast where we’ll dock.” Her sigh is the dusted breeze, the heaving exhale of the bellows, and the fire flickers ever brighter as her eyes do the same. “I am lucky to have found her.”

“A birdcage for a heart, Lady Barberre,” Timotheé murmurs, sipping from his glass and savoring the amber burn in his throat, the warmth in his stomach. “For you must have one to have captured not one, but two birds to love.”

Her laugh reminds him of freesia, light and sweet but strong enough to bloom in winter’s chill, grasping the first strands of spring and holding tight, tenacious.

“You’re a clever boy, Robin,” Barberre murmurs back, and Stephanie snorts into her own drink, looking between them.

“You cannot keep him for yourself, Barberre,” she says, shoving a wisp of blond hair from her face and laughing openly at Barberre’s mock-innocence.

“Why ever not, Miss Stephanie?” Barberre raises an eyebrow, sips her drink, decorum all about her. “I was under the impression it is you who is in service to me?”

“Dinah doesn’t want any more of your strays,” Stephanie laughs, setting her glass on the sideboard. “And besides, I should think Robin has his own journey to make. Am I correct, Robin?” Timotheé swallowed, his cold glass slipping slightly in his hand.

“Indeed, that I do,” Timotheé murmurs. “I’ve got a long way to go yet.”

Barberre does not press, and Timotheé goes to bed; and he tries desperately not to hear the murmurings of the lady and her companion, speculating about him in the common room.

-

There’s a sweetness inherent to waking up like this, his lover’s face pressed tight to his chest and clinging limbs wrapped around him, warm and sweating beneath the covers in a not-unpleasant way. He strokes the tangled, soft hair that spills across his collarbone and breathes deep, pressing his head back into the pillow.

It has been, now, a moon and a half since Damian and Timotheé left the castle, and though he’s not one to gripe about blessed peace and placid days, he worries. He’d never admit it; the harem slave of the warrior prince, worrying about him? What good could his worries even do?  
But there’s been no news and little sign of anything, other than the Desert King being even more cagey than usual, and Jason… worries.

He sighs heavy again and slips into dreams, silver fish dripping down his spine.

(Not knowing that, perhaps, his worries are founded in truth.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of now this story is current to what I'm crossposting on tumblr! Yay!


	15. The Anchor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lady or the tiger? The sword or the crown?

It’s midnight, here, the Scedenig shores gleaming and frothing as Timotheé shivers on a bench on the beach, waiting for the sun to appear once more. His ticket to Bristollen is clutched tightly in his hand, trembling fingers grasping at it like a lifeline. The wind is cruel and the people are absent, and the glowing of the phosphorescent rocks that line the sidewalks here in the dark hours nearly mocks him, feeble fingers reaching for his ankles between the feet of the bench. Fourteen hours until salvation, cast off ropes leaving his ties on this landmass behind and his trail faint and anemic at best.

And then the gothic spires of his homeland will rise up on the horizon, and the prodigal prince will have returned to his hollow castle and his country will have a ruler once more. Or, alternately and more realistically, Timotheé’s blood will stain the cobblestones of his childhood home, and the last of the Drakes will have died out just as the Kaäns had before them. It’s like they say- between a rock and a hard place lies the choice to choose your fate. To go down in a blaze of glory, to die standing tall and trying, at last, to regain the throne, or to have to see the betrayal and disappointment on the faces of those he has loved this last year as the blood leaves his body in an arterial spurt, the last crimson tribute to the house of the Desert Prince- the choice is not a hard one, not anymore. Not after what Damian had said.

There is a consort he cannot be and a warrior he cannot be, a son he isn’t anymore and a brother he had never been. There is a poet and a mirror, a garden and a wasteland, a once-great and invulnerable hero of legend and a lover who looked back to reassure himself of his beloved’s presence only to damn the both of them in the process. There is a pillar of salt and the blood of the innocent, the tears of the pious and the sin of the salt, all on his hands, all in his brain. All in his heart.

But clarity is his, truly his, here and now. Sand in his shoes and pain in his chest, and the clearest knowledge he has held since the man of two colors dashed him like a fragile vase across the blood-spattered stones. Arabâya is no longer the land of Hesperides he may claim asylum in, and Anglas has nothing to offer him but cruel lies and harsh punishments.

Bristollen is all that can lie ahead.

And perhaps Timotheé dozes, because dawn is flowing faintly over the edge of the choppy sea when a warm hand rests on his shoulder and shakes him awake.

“Robin,” a voice hisses in his ear, and he jerks, elbow hitting the wood of the bench and eyes wide as blond hair, smelling like summer fruit, clouds his vision.

“Stephanie?” his fingers flutter around the ticket, and he clamps his hand shut, shoving the ticket into his pocket and standing up. The blonde’s hands are on her hips, and she glares at him from her position, just slightly shorter than he. Fingers slender and strong, grabbing the front of his shirt, and Timotheé’s eyes widen even further, his feet bracing against the sand beneath him.

“I was under the impression that princes like you didn’t travel in lies this shabby, your highness,” her voice slinks under his collar like a snake, hissing and biting, and Timotheé feels his stomach drop.

“How did you find me?” he presses his fingers to her, prying them from his shirt, and her eyes narrow dangerously, a sliver of mercury-blue that spits and sparks at him. “And who knows of this?”

“Barberre knows of this,” she growls, rose dawn sending her spun-gold hair into a halo around her face. “For it was she who confirmed my suspicion that we’d shared our cabin and our  _hospitality_  with a snake of king cobra proportions. What are you,  _poison_ -prince, that you cannot even travel in your own name?”

“You do not understand,” he begs of her, appeals to her mercy, which is in short stock, apparently. It is this betrayal, yet another course of his lies alienating him from those who have sheltered his battered and bruised body, and he can feel his throat closing up with emotion. “I cannot be known to those who sent me into these lies, into this hiding, and I  _promise_  you I meant to do no harm.” He can feel his feet sliding in the sand, he can feel himself slipping, and he does nothing.

He gathers no hand hold nor regains his footing, and the sand swallows his ankles, his knees buckling under the force of her anger and his forehead pressing to the seat of the bench.

“I mean to do no harm, I mean no harm, I mean no harm,” her arms gather around him, gold tickling the side of his jaw, and still the words cannot cease. Timotheé cannot stop, he cannot halt his throat, and they continue on.

_I mean no harm, I mean no harm, I mean no harm, I mean no harm at all._

_I mean no harm, I mean no harm, I mean no harm at all._

_I mean no harm, I mean no harm._

_I meant none and still it came._

Her sweet mouth presses to his cheekbone, shushing him, hands curling around his biceps, and she coaxes him to his feet in time to see the early morning fully glint off of the metal of the Lady Barberre’s chair, where she sits back on the solid paved ground of the sidewalk, watching Stephanie and Timotheé with eyes like a peregrine.

The ticket feels like a wooden weight, a lead-filled casket, even as he slogs through sand and Stephanie’s fingers twine around his elbow and drag him to shore, where red hair flows like flame from the disapproving eyes of Lady Barberre.

“Deceit does not become you, Robin,” she says, her lips pursed, as she turns her chair towards the vehicle waiting for them at the end of the paved road. “Neither did it ever my own love. You take his place well, however much I wish you had not.” Sharpness, through his heart, and he sits on the cushion of the vehicle, perched like it is a fragile thing and will break like all the other parts of his life. “Lonely little boys without fathers, without mothers, and without those beloved most closely.”

He chokes on his own sobs, fingers rending the velvet of the curtains, and Lady Barberre does not even bat a single eyelash as she regards him, her hands folded in her lap and her back straight.

“You have been wronged,” she says, soft like a breeze and harsh like a wind, wrapping around him and burying him in the past he’s trying so hard to shed like a winter cloak in the summer of his despair. “You have been so wronged, little bird, that you cannot even turn for help from those who would give it without a second thought.”

“And is that not what I had thought he would be?” Timotheé slams his palm weakly against the door of the carriage, and he sucks cold air in like daggers in his lungs. “If I have been soured and struck out alone it is only because I turned to the one I loved and only found rebuttal in his eyes.”

Soft fingers, brushing a tear from his cheek. Gold hair, flowing across his shoulder. Warm palms, pressing to his shoulders and holding him together as he tries not to be wrenched in two.

“I came to him when I was at my most low, cast out of my country by the warriors of Schatten and wounded terribly, and he gathered me up. He remade me, and in doing so, I found there was but one piece of me he had not returned. He took my heart and he kept it close, and I followed because there was nothing I could do but love him for all the sharp edges and softened words he gave me. And then, when we came upon the doorstep of his father, his mother struck me down and laid me bare for all the court to know, my origins left open, and he cast me off as though he had never held my heart at all,” Timotheé bowed his head. “And now I go, for to live or to die, I do not know- but I know I will do it under the sun of my own country, and I will fall like the prince I have not been in nearly a year’s time.”

“Alone, you presume to take the castle?”

“Alone, as I have been all my life.”

“Alone, as you are no longer, fool of a prince,” Stephanie’s fingernails dug into his skin, and he winced, her eyes spitting and sparking at him once more. “You sought no help in true form, nor did you confess your guise, but the actions of fear are nothing when set against the actions of courage that, once found, can as one solitary be stronger than those of the cowardly many. You have a lion heart in a bird’s breast, and you shall not stand single against those who have robbed you of your home.”

“It would be wise to listen to Stephanie, little bird,” Lady Barberre rapped sharply on the wall of the vehicle behind her, and the carriage began to move. “Now, though, it is time for us to listen to you. The truth, Timotheé, and all of it.”

The bird rattled the bars of his cage, and sang a song great and terrible, and the carriage rattled on as the dawn crept over the oft-darkened land of Scedenig with inexorable and inexhaustible might.

—

There is a story, told in the deserts of his ancestors, of a prince who fell in love with a pauper, a soldier, a man far beneath his rank. And his father raged, furious, against this breaking of castes. He took up the soldier, the pauper, the lower, and he threw him in the arena, sitting on his throne like triumph had come to him in righteous justice.

Behind one door of the arena lay a tiger, waiting and slavering over the thought of the soldier’s bones and blood and meat in its razor mouth. Pacing and whining and clawing at the door, and waiting to be set free, waiting to devour the prince’s beloved.

Behind the other door stood a woman, beautiful beyond all before her, waiting and wringing her fingers and pressing her lips together nervously, mussing the sheen of her lip-paint. Pacing and sighing and waiting to be set free, waiting to take the prince’s beloved where the prince could never follow.

And the prince had to sit on the throne his father had given him, and choose- should he sacrifice the life of his beloved and follow after? Should he watch his beloved die and sit there, stoic, as the last drops of blood left the soldier-pauper’s body? Or should he sacrifice himself, and let his beloved go where he could never have taken him?

Damian twisted his fingers, clenching the arms of the chair, and could not, for the life of him, decide whether he hoped the lady or the tiger would spill from his father’s lips when the king of Anglas opened the door and stepped inside.

“I should not have let you persuade me to wait, father,” he turned his head, standing and pressing his palm to the cold of the glass.

_The lady or the tiger?_

_The tiger or the lady?_

_Death or despair- mourning or that indescribably painful feeling of Timotheé’s fingers being just out of reach?_

“He is no longer in Anglas,” Bruce starts, measured, his hand resting on Damian’s shoulder. “Timotheé has boarded a ferry, though they cannot find which exact one. But they will, they will-”

“I know. Where he is going. I know to where I must follow.”

He knows exactly where Timotheé will go, now that all illusions are dispelled. He knows the tiger Timothée arms to fight and he has long felt the touch of the woman Timotheé seeks to wed.

He knows the dragon that will breathe fire until Damian can do nothing but fall to his knees and sift his fingers through the glittering charcoal ashes of his love.

And Damian knows that he cannot let his beloved face either wild beast alone.

The sea is roiling below the cliffs of Anglas, but Damian does not care for trivialities, for safety, for caution- he shall not be sunk, not on this journey. His sword is strong in his scabbard, his armor thick and gleaming. His eyes are fire and his tongue is acid, and his mother does not even reach out to his arm when the Desert Prince descends the staircase to the entrance hall of the palace, Bruce following several steps behind him and a servant carrying a case laden heavy behind Bruce.

“I will return with Timotheé at my side, mother.” The curve of his cheekbone catches the light, and he turns, his leather clad hand resting on the pommel of his sword. “The consort mine-own.” Her eyes flash anger, fingers clenching, but he knows she can’t resist. Not now. Not after what she’s done- what has come unto the light today. “And you shall no more rend him from my side then I shall separate you and father. Mine-own and I are not pawns for your games, nor puppets for your strings.”

His voice is thundering, a weight upon her spine, bowing her down under the force of his lungs as they inflate like lions, proud and golden in the sun.

“And it is respect that I shall demand, and respect we shall receive.”

—

The boat for Bristollen leaves the Scedenig shore, a raven haired prince and a golden haired warrior at the helm, arm in arm and knife to knife. The sea rocks them without mercy, but they hold tight, and they weather the storm.

There are not enough hours left in his journey for Timotheé to voice all of his regrets about all the should have beens he could have made into memories with Damian at his side, but Stephanie has two open ears and warm arms, and he tries his level best. There are not enough hours left in his journey for his heart to settle on the memory he will hold close as the blood slows and stops in his veins.

Fingers in fingers, intertwined and laid across a paisley bedspread, embroidered thick and soft with dyed cotton.

Thighs touching thighs, pressed to one another in front of the crackling fire.

Breath against cheekbones, the darkness and light of the gala swirling around them as though something other than the way Damian looks at him would ever matter.

The boat leaves for Bristollen with a raven-haired boy at its helm and a golden-haired comforter at his side.

—

The boat leaves for Bristollen with a prince in its cabin and a sailor at its wheel.

Below the deck, splashed with water and tasting salt on his tongue, Damian opens the trunk the servant had brought and left aboard, elegant fingers trailing over the brightly colored silks. There, nestled in soft and smooth fabric, lie two daggers- two rings. Two hilts, strong and noble knots of metal twining up to the blade, the blade that gleams like moonbeams and star-swords, blades that have never touched the iron and bitter of blood. Pure. Unmarred. Smooth and gleaming like salvation in the darkness of the cabin.

And two rings, tied together with cord of crimson, gold and ruby set in intricate patterns- a heavy band and a light and graceful one, juxtaposed and unworn.

The case is easy to shut, easy to lock. Easy to keep on the table of the cabin as he stands at the helm of the ship, his eyes towards his beloved’s kingdom, waiting and straining for any sign of the spires of the capital city.

The boat leaves for Bristollen with a prince at its helm and a heartbreak laden with hope weighing it down low in the water as though it trails its own anchor behind it.

 


	16. The Ever Changing Mechanics of Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is time to reclaim once more the lands that Timotheé rightfully deserves. It is time to reclaim what is his.

Timotheé feels like his heart is going to burst the moment he steps onto the cobblestones of the courtyard of his childhood. He feels like he’s going to die- like he will keel over now, from the shock of it. Things are not so different without him here, without the proper regents- they are duller, darker- they are dirtier, baser. They are wrong at their very core, but the sun still shines high above them, blindingly strong.

It’s almost startling to feel the air of these familiar corridors once more, funneling sweet, musty and damp, through the doorways and up into the washed out blue of the sky above past Timotheé and Stephanie. The sword is strong at his side, heavy metal balanced perfectly and swift, slight compared to traditional blades. What once was unwieldy is graceful in his hands.

He can feel the summer heat of Ellada, the burning of Damian’s breath on the back of his neck as he leads Timotheé through the motions of a kata, of a root movement, a base position with which to spring his defense from. Stephanie’s hand presses against his shoulder, and he swallows heavily, a lump of emotion clogging his throat.

The sands of the desert do not hinder his steps, draining from his sandals with every step forward. The sun of the desert king’s derisive stare does not burden him any longer, nor does the weight of his fear of rejection by his prince grace his shoulders.

The silver fish dreams are pooling at the base of his spine and tangling up in his rib cage, bougainvillea blooming across his collarbone and through the cracks of his teeth. There is a sick apprehension in the pound of his heart, loud in his ears; his blood rushes like a river, flooding his face, and his fingers tingle where he rests them on the pommel hilt of his sword. Many years he has walked these stones.

Many years he had loved here before, and many years he had spent learning how to be the king this land deserved. Many years he had repeated lessons rote and many days had he wondered why this castle had seemed so lonely, so alone. Many years he had waited for someone to love him back and make him strong, until his bones had calcified brittle and he had stood tall, pretending his strength so as to bring life to the anemic, distant affections of his parents.

Many years he had crossed this courtyard to climb the bell tower and shout from the top, where no one could hear him- love me. I am your king. I am your king.

Love me.

I am your king.

Now, though, another man sits on the throne, on the dais, on the carved marble dais of the temple-like throne room beneath the bell tower. Now, though, three seats sit empty of the four placed highest, and Timotheé’s breath hurts in its deafening, thundering loudness as it heaves from his chest.

Where once sat the Kaäns- where once sat the high king Jakob and his bride Gabrielle- where once sat the princesses Katten and Betten- there had sat the Drakes. There had sat Jannette and Jacque. There had sat Timotheé.

Where once sat the high king Jacque and his bride Jannette- where once sat the prince Timotheé, there now sat the traitor.

There now sat the giver of lust and death, there now sat the taker of life and innocence.

There now sat the man of two colors; there now sat Slade Wylsøne.

There now sat the deceiver, the betrayer, the killer and the conqueror. The usurper and the dasher and the mercenary heart that beat on borrowed time from borrowed blood he had wrenched from the hearts of Timotheé’s parents.

And he smiled with the smile of a dragon, of a deuce- the double edged sword Timotheé could feel acutely in his gut. Timotheé stood tall, braced his feet, and he raged in his chest for the injustice and the desecration. Here the blood stains of his parents laid still- there lay the altar of his ancestors and his own desecration. Here lay the altar of his purpose, and here sat the arsonist that had set it all aflame. Still Slade smiled, the tooth of fox and hunger of wolves in his mouth and the bloodthirst of a warrior accustomed to bathing in the blood of his enemies was crying out in his eyes.

It was fear unlike that which Timotheé had known.

But behind him was nothing- behind him was Arabâya and Anglas. Behind him was Ellada and Pracchade, a boat that rocked sweetly on the calmest harbors and a man he had loved with all of himself and then let down. Behind him was Stephanie, who stood in the doorway and could not do a thing to help him but be there- but be eyes to see him as he lived or died.

And the fear was not, it was short lived and struck down. And the fear was dead on the ground, broken on the cobblestones, because he could feel it as he breathed. He could feel the echo of Damian’s voice, and the calloused touch of his hands, wrapping pale fingers around the hilt of his sword. He could feel the heat of his chest and the strength of his thighs, moving forward and bracing his feet on the stones.

“King-Killer,” Timotheé said slowly, stepping forward. Slade’s brow quirked, his sprawled position suggesting sanguinity. But he was with one hand on his weapon and his mouth was full of razors, and Timotheé knew- he knew better than that facade. “Queen-Killer.”

“Prince-fucker,” Slade said derisively, his laughter echoing around the chamber, and Timotheé flinched, aching a little deep in the pit of his stomach at his involuntary show of weakness. “Oh, little prince, have you come here to find your death now that your secret has been found out?”

“Not to find a death my own,” he shifted. The mourning doves scattered, cooing on the window sills and bathing in the dust that swirled through the rays of colored light beaming through the stained glass windows. “To find a death for  you, Slade.”

“A death for me?” the mercenary shifted, slowly. Deceptively slowly, drawing himself up until he stood, finally, tall on the dais. “A death for  _me_? Don’t you know,  _pathetic_  little  _broken_  thing?” The laughter built in his chest, drawing up and bubbling like a viscous, poisonous fountain, echoing about the room. “Slade doesn’t die. He does not fall within the shackles of this mortal coil, little prince. He does not fall at all.”

“He shall fall today,” Timotheé cried, far louder than he had meant- far louder than he should have. His voice reverberated, strong and clear, and his sandals scraped on the stones as he stepped forward once more- once more, twice more, until he was not twenty feet from this enemy- this purported immortal. This king-killer queen-killer dream-killer slave to the thirst for blood which ran hot within his very bones.

He moved faster than Timotheé had anticipated (always one step ahead, always one step ahead in this game, this game which he has been playing for far too long) and the clang of metal on metal was jarring, Timotheé’s fingers jittering and numb with the impact. There were glints of anger and glints of triumph, and Timotheé could just barely move the sword fast enough to block each strike. Each strike struck strong enough to sever a limb, to cut through an artery and a bone, and he was breathing like a running warrior before ten strikes had elapsed.

It was a game of cat and mouse, a game to be played by Slade- a game of toying with the prince until he could strike him down and disgrace him this time not with his body but with his blade.

But his hands stayed strong and his arms stayed stone, and Slade’s eyes grew hotter and hotter as Timotheé managed to block again and again and again, moving without thinking and thinking as he moved that perhaps, perhaps this death would be one of valiance and blazing glory, the end of a fool’s errand for his kingdom.

Perhaps Stephanie would not suffer for it and perhaps Timotheé would fall upon the stones the hero that his people had deserved- a hero that would take the desperate chance in order to reclaim the land for the blood of those who had rightfully run it with a benevolent hand for so many years.

The colors spun around as he whirled, his eyes trained on one, two, three, four.

Orange, black, blue, white.

_Orange, black, blue, white._

Orange of cloth and black of metal, blue of eyes and white of hair.

Orange of fury, fire wrought and black of metal, shadows bought- the blue of eyes that have seen so much and the white of hair that’s known no touch, no tenderness for years upon years of silence and loneliness and everything builds up upon itself until what strikes at Timotheé is a cobra of a man who is not loved for anything other than his ability to kill and kill again. Who is not sought out unless a life needs ending.

Who is nothing but a sword smart enough to pick itself up and stab itself through countless hearts.

He closes his eyes for a brief second.

In the summer- one summer, a long time ago, when Timotheé was young, he had sat here, one stifling day while the adults were all at a diplomatic function, and laid on the cool stones, soaking up their blessed cold. He had felt each crack and bump, and they had cradled him as he closed his eyes and let the colors of the windows dance across his eyelids as the sun rose and fell over his parents’ kingdom.

When he had woken, though, his name had echoed through the shadows of the throne room, frantic and afraid and somehow detached from everything. He had watched through the eyes of someone else, a spectre, as his mother had rushed into the throne room, her hands cradling his face, still round and sweet with the innocence of a toddler.

“Timotheé,” she had said, her voice so soft and yet so sharp and strong, bergamot tempered with lavender. “ _Timotheé_ , never frighten your mother like that,” she had told him, pressing a kiss that seemed far colder than it should against his smooth forehead.

Timotheé had shivered as her hands curled underneath him and lifted him up into her arms, his four year old arms wrapping around her neck and his mouth pressing a clumsy kiss back to her powdered face. He can almost smell her perfume and the scent of her hair and feel the cool, smooth touch of her pearls against his cheek. He can almost hear her scolding him for escaping from his nannies, and he can remember staring up at her with his eyes far too wide, unused to this display of sudden and uncharacteristic emotion.

He had known before what had startled her so, but now, in the eyes of a spectre so faint, he could tell.

In the corner of the room where the colors did not swirl, there had lain the flashes- orange and black and blue and white, watching the sleeping child where he clutched at a handful of daisies and curled into the coldness of the stone to escape the summer’s heat. His mother had known and she had feared and she had snatched him back.

His mother had seen the man of two colors leaving the diplomatic banquet and she had known him for the cobra that he truly was.

_Timotheé, your mother loves you._

_Timotheé, darling, it’s time to wake up._

_Timotheé, my sweetest moon beam, my most dear blossom, my heart and my soul and my life-_

_You promised me, moon beam, that you would never frighten your mother like that._

_Timotheé, pearl of mine- darling, it’s time to wake up._

He opens his eyes.

The blades spit sparks and they scrape across each other, and someone is calling his name.

Slade’s eyes narrow, and he stabs out at Timotheé’s side, and Timotheé knocks his thrust aside, and someone is calling his name.

The flat of his blade knocks against Slade’s jaw, and Slade laughs, wiping it off with the back of his hand and nicking Timotheé’s shoulder, and someone is calling his name.

In the doorway there stands what he had thought had lain behind. Damian, his shoulders broad and blocking the sun, and Stephanie holding his forearm as though holding him back.

“Timotheé,” he shouts, broken and desperate, and Timotheé finally draws blood, slicing through Slade’s tunic and into his left arm.

“ _Timotheé_ ,” he murmurs, deep and sorrowful, and Timotheé hops backwards, losing his balance as his heel catches a stone. Slade’s blade is cold and slick with his own blood, from his shoulder, where it presses against his cheek, and Slade scoffs. His eyes narrow when Timotheé knocks it aside, rolling and stumbling to his feet.

“You are determined, little prince, to go unto your death as battered and bruised as you can possibly be, aren’t you?”

“I am deteremined,” Timotheé snarls, feeling the color rise in his cheeks and the acid rising in his throat. “But it is not that which I am determined about.”

“You know,” Slade says, conversationally, as he swings his sword and makes to hit Timotheé’s thighs, “he does not love you.”

“I know far more than you would think, _King-Killer_.”

Slade’s laughter makes Timotheé want to retch.

“Do you know this? Are you so downtrodden and weak, so cast-aside and useless that you do not even expect love? Oh, little prince, you are more sad than I by far if you are foolish enough to throw away even your ability to die pretending you were loved.” His smirk wides and curls and Timotheé can see the hissing tongue of the cobra behind Slade’s blue-blue frozen-lake eyes. “Denying yourself even that small comfort, that lie, as you come to your death here.”

“Deny what comforts you would deny and lie to yourself as you must, for it is not I that shall fall with such facades clogging my eyes like the cataracts of an old beggar, Slade,” Timotheé raged, raising his sword high, and he cried out at the bite of the blade on the tip of his rib cage even as he slammed his own blade down upon Slade’s shoulder. He felt the crack of the collarbone reverberate up his shoulder, and he saw the hatred flare in Slade’s eyes even as the blood began to spill, hot and thick and bitingly metallic, from their bodies. His but a trickle and Slade’s the gush of severed arteries where Timotheé’s blade had slipped and slit the pulsing vein in the mercenary’s neck.

“Even the ice queen that was once your mother, the girl who was once a girl I knew, a girl I grew fond of and took into my home, found it in herself to harbor affection for you,” Slade said, his voice a rasp and his knees buckling as he fell to the ground, his sword clattering on the stones. His fingers curled around Timotheé’s wrist and the boy-prince cried out, jerking back and toppling the man as he felt the crack of his wrist and the arching, throbbing pain of bones crushed by forces much stronger than they were. “Changeling child that no one can find the heart to put out of its misery, doomed to your sorrow and destined for the ice your mother came from, you will find no peace in this, no matter who you fool into loving you.” His eyes glinted, and Timotheé shuddered.

“You have no power here,” he rasped, his own sword clattering loudly. “ _You have no power here!_ ”

The light that had pulsed, sick and tainted, hateful and unnatural, flickered once.

Twice.

And then-

It was gone.

Timotheé fell to his knees, his fingers scraping at his clothes, ripping the sword-belt from his hips and tearing the bitter lies the cobra had woven around his bones to shreds. Damian’s fingers closed around his shoulders, and he was there- he had run from the doorway, and he was there.

He was there, pulling Timotheé up against his chest and holding him crushingly close, the warm sun that had danced through Timotheé’s dreams and pulled him from his sleep to find the sweet embrace of love returned tenfold. His lips pressed tight to Timotheé’s temple, and the pale boy, trembling like the leaves of the aspen trees in the wind-season, clutched at Damian’s tunic with his un-broken hand.

“It would not have gone to lose you,” Damian said, his voice hoarse as he repeated what he had told his love so many weeks ago, in the warm cocoon of his bedroom, back in the lands of the blood red sands. 

“No,” Timotheé rejoined, closing his eyes and pressing his face to Damian’s chest, letting the waves of pain wash through him and out of him. “It would not have. Not at all.”


	17. Benediction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And each kiss is benediction to a sinner who begs to spend his life on his knees, worshipping at the altar of his beloved.

When they break apart, Timotheé feels like a rusted man, his joints creaking and trembling under the strain. His wounds are aching and his breath is shaky, and the smell of iron in the air is making him sick and faint. Stephanie grasps at his arm when he tries to take a step away from Damian, to look up at him, and Damian reaches out- but their moment, tenuous and comforting, has dissipated, and the touch of his fingers on Timotheé’s collarbone makes him cold inside. He can’t help but be so afraid- he can’t help the pit that opens up in the bottom of his stomach, the high of victory short lived in his veins.

Because- he had left this behind. He had forsaken this when his sweetest of deceptions had crumbled, sugar floss in the rain, and he had thought it left behind. He had- he had. It was behind and it was to stay that way. But it seems, the wash of orange glass light over Damian’s face swirling around and glowing amber in the shadows of the temple- it seems as though his past, however distant and however near, has come now to stand before him and demand truths Timotheé is not ready to give. Damian is stone-faced when Timotheé tries to speak. Words fail in his throat, crumpled up parchment and sand, blowing away on the wind of his gaze.

“I have loved you long,” he finally manages, his fingers pressed tight to the cut on his chest. “And I will love you longer. That was never a lie.”

And, as Damian moves to speak, to reach out once more, his face softening like soft sandstone cliffs in the face of the mightiest winds, Timotheé passes out in front of his beloved for the umpteenth time in their relationship.

It is the sweetest, strangest deja vu, to wake up here, in the home of his childhood, with silver fish dreams slipping down his eyelashes and curling on his cheek as he blinks himself awake. A role reversal from that morning, when he had woken in Damian’s bed and Damian had told him that he was the paramount- that he was beloved, and that he was ya hayati, and that he was not to go where Damian could not follow.

Now, instead, they are in Timotheé’s bedroom, the dawn light filtering through the window and Timotheé’s silver fish dreams have finally slipped down to rest in the pond where they were born, here- in this bed where they first swam and breathed deep of the waters so sweet.

Damian’s fingers are reaching out to him, unconsciously, his eyes fluttering with dreams as they fight to the front of his mind. But he is curled up, a large and ridiculous bundle of Desert Prince, laying on the far side of Timotheé’s massive bed. There is a mountain between them- a range of peaks that are spined and sharp, threatening to prick Timotheé’s trembling finger when he reaches out towards Damian’s hand where it’s fisted in the sheet.

His breath feels heavy in his chest; he exhales, and he can feel the bitter, rising scream in his chest. It curls around his throat and makes it difficult to draw breath in, now, and he wants to rip the sheet off of him. He wants to rip the sheet off and throw his pillow to the ground and tip the water from the pond full of silver fish dreams swimming around his bed posts, and he wants- and he wants.

But his wounds are bandaged and his wrists ache, and his head feels full as it throbs, as he braces himself against the headboard and swings his legs off the side of the bed, watching them splash in water only he can see- disturbing fish that only he can feel brushing at his toes and at his ankles.

Damian stirs- his vision turns tunnel, blackening and curling in at the edges like a paper in the flame. It hits him, in the now and here, like a boulder. Like a northeasterly wind that knocks him off his feet and blows him so far out to sea that he’s sure to drown.

“Beloved?” Damian’s voice is groggy, thick with sleep.

He feels like he’s falling, until he realizes that he is, and Damian is scrambling up gracelessly and catching his shoulders, propping him up, his hands just as gentle as Timotheé remembers. He can’t help himself- he reaches out, grasping at Damian’s shoulders, and he lets his forehead press to the hitch of Damian’s throat. He lets himself clutch at that which he wishes to never relinquish.

Beloved, he calls him, and Timotheé wants to weep. He wants to speak- to explain, and at the same time, he wants to never, ever let go. Damian’s hand curls around the back of his head, threading through his hair, and presses his face further into his warm skin. His lips kiss the edge of Timotheé’s temple, once, twice, thrice, and his breath is sweet like morning on Timotheé’s forehead.

“Terrible am I, but hate me not,” Timotheé said softly, his throat raspy and his fingers clasped tight around Damian’s neck. Damian’s chest shakes, and for a second, an unbelievable second, Timotheé thinks that he’s crying. And then, bubbling over, spilling from his open mouth- Damian’s laughter fills up the tight, warm space between them, and Timotheé’s eyes are wide where he’s pressing his mouth to Damian’s collarbone.

“Hate you?” Damian murmured, his fingers splaying across the small of Timotheé’s bare back. “Dearest, it would be a miracle if I could ever bring myself to do anything other than love you madly and blindly.”

Timotheé felt the bridge of his nose prickle and sting in the space between his eyes, and, like a thin glass stem shattering, the tears broke from the corners of his eyes and he could tell the hot tears were soaking the skin beneath his face. Damian held him and the tempest broke forth, a persistent buoy in a storm that kept him afloat until he could breath once more and his prince’s arms had caught him up, holding him closely.

“It’s a long road you’ve traveled,”  Damian finally said, his lips brushing across Timotheé’s forehead. “And a long storm you’ve weathered, Timotheé. And still I love you, and still I will continue to love you.” He leaned back, cupping Timotheé’s cheek and curling his thumb to brush tears that trembled on the edges of Timotheé’s eyelashes like salted diamonds. “So I ask you, dearest. Tell me of your travels that have wearied you so?”

“Kiss me first?” Timotheé asked, his voice clogged with his tears, and Damian simply smiled down at him and bent his head, kissing the tears out of his mouth and breathing him back upright.

It was everything Timotheé had missed- that which he knew he could not live without, the comfort soft like candy floss and the arms strong as stone that held him up above the waves which threatened to engulf. It was the smell of Damian’s cologne, spicy and warm and once more like home. He threaded his fingers through Damian’s hair, closing his eyes as he pressed his lips gently to the edge of Damian’s cheekbone and breathed deeply.

“I will,” Timotheé curled his fingers at the base of Damian’s neck. “I will tell you how it came to be that I bled on your doorstep, all those months ago.”

“I will listen,” Damian said, and-

He did.

As you do, when you make promises so deep- when you search for your love and you find them, whole and hale. When you make promises so deep, when you utter- I shall love you still in hell. I shall love you still in death as I have loved you in life, and I shall cease only when all that surrounds us ceases as well, and still I would fight to keep loving you even past that horizon.

As you do, when you find yourself sleeping on a bed of bougainvillea and freesia, breathing in the sweetest blossoms, each kiss a benediction upon your soul and each touch of your fingers another grounding reminder that this garden blooms for two souls together.

For long ago it might have been Melisande and Ra’s- two lovers, hand in hand, curled together in the morning sunshine. And less long ago might it have been Bruce and Talia, the night and the shadow, give and take and love that had transcended.

Perhaps it is the Lady Canary and Barberre- perhaps it is Jason and Dité. Perhaps it is these as well, but here and now it is simply Damian and Timotheé.

Here and now, in this room, wrapped around each other, twined so tight they might never unknot themselves from this grasp- this desperate plea for connection never to be broken. It is a boy and his love- a love and his boy.

A storyteller and his prince; a prince and his storyteller. A prince and his champion, a sword and a brush.

The moment stretches like timeless roads across a red sand desert, leading to spires that crown the Bristollen sky high above lavender fields, bordering on desert oasis and castle walls to keep the winds and the terrors and the evil from those who are precious.

And every second is that same benediction bestowed upon their brows.

A moon and sun.

The stars turn ever, ever on.

The world does not stop spinning.

The tides crash against the shore.

And the rightful king of Bristollen finds his Desert Prince once more.


	18. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Beginning of all Ends

There is a journey ahead of them. Vast and reaching, on past the visible horizon.

There is a storm coming.

There are clouds gathering.

But there is also a hand in his hand- there is also a ring on his finger and a sword in his sheath, and a warrior prince beside him that shall give no quarry to those they will battle against. There are colors bloody and golden striped across his skin, and his warrior prince wears colors like the summer skies before a storm and like the silver of mercury, pooling in the cracks of their entwined hands.

It is no solitude that faces him now.

Stephanie has not returned to Scedenig, though it has been a week since Slade’s defeat- instead, she stays by Timotheé’s side at Lady Barberre’s behest, standing regal and tall in the courtyard each day and channeling her mentor when she deals with the scavengers and hunters of the press and the diplomats across the world who come to lay themselves prostrate before the new King of Bristollen’s empire.

Timotheé finds in himself a strange feeling of triumph as each diplomat tries to ingratiate themself with him, now that he is no longer on the run from Schatten- he finds in himself even more triumph when Schatten diplomats, the very same that had been at the ball where Slade had made his second move, kneel before his throne and ask for his forgiveness.

And he grants it, for is that not how a good king rules? Perhaps not a king of the desert, but a king of the land of lavender fields- a king of the old countries, once peaceful. Forgiveness he grants, for it seems that for all the world he will be a king of old peace, his chosen consort will be the king of old wars- Damian snarls beside him every time another person lays their falsehoods at his feet.

But their happiness here, their triumph- their victory- it cannot last. They must return to the land of the blood red sands, and face the Desert King.

It takes another week for Timotheé to find a suitable replacement, but eventually, he does- the Lady Tamerre, a brilliant warrior and tactician, and, most importantly, a brilliant leader. She takes the throne as his advisor in the interim, as he and Damian decide their futures, and they leave with Stephanie at their side for the lands that had borne their growing love like a seedling sheltered from the wind.

And they come to the palace of the sands with their heads held high, and fury burning once more in Damian’s eyes. Ra’s al Ghul, commanding as ever, greets them himself at the gate, his hand on his sword’s hilt and his eyes a thousand years old.

“So she could not thwart you,” Ra’s says, his voice booming across the courtyard.

The silence deafens Timotheé.

“And none can,” Damian finally replies, his head tilted back, his voice as imperious as ever. His shoulder moves slightly, filling a space in the forefront and protecting Timotheé almost unconsciously. Ra’s al Ghul’s laughter fills the space between them, rich and deep and amused, and tinged bittersweet, the laugh of a giant in a world of men.  He nods, rusty but graceful, conceding to them more elegantly that Timotheé had thought possible.

“And none shall, Desert King. None but that which thwarts us all shall take you from the throne that you have earned this day.” Damian’s eyes flashed fiercely, his hand grasping the hilt of his own sword.

“I shall greet him like a friend long awaited when he comes to my doorstep many years from now,” Damian said, standing tall. “With my own King at my side.”

And Timotheé had never loved him more than in that moment so glorious and golden.

—

He takes Damian’s hand in his, and so they stand, linked together at the very pinnacle of the palace, looking out over the crimson sands that glint like mica in the sunset.

_For oh, my love, don’t stop us now_

_Though weary we seem, I know_

_Oh, my love, just take my hand_

_And on, and on, we’ll go._

**Author's Note:**

> This has been crossposted to Tumblr.


End file.
